Attention: Here be dragons

This is the latest (unstable) version of this documentation, which may document features not available in or compatible with released stable versions of Redot.

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Scripting development

GDScript

Annotation guidelines

Create annotations for modifiers that act on the script or its code. Additionally, create annotations for behavior that is specific to the Redot engine and editor; if the primary purpose is to affect the way that the engine or editor treats or interacts with the script, implement the token as an annotation.

Do not create annotations for general programming language features.

# Affects how the editor treats this script.
@icon("res://path/to/class/icon.svg")

# Affects how the engine interacts with this script.
@onready var character_name = $Label

# static is a general programming language feature.
static var num_players = 2

For historical reasons, some existing annotations and keywords do not strictly follow these guidelines. Choosing between implementing a feature as an annotation or as a language keyword is a nuanced decision that should be made through discussion with other GDScript developers.