---
name: gdext-verify-live-docs
description: Verify gdext (Rust bindings for Godot 4) API usage against live docs before writing code. Use whenever writing, reviewing, or debugging Rust code that uses the gdext crate — GodotClass derives, node registration, signals, exported properties, or any gdext-specific macro or trait.
---

# gdext: verify against live docs, don't trust recall

`gdext` is pre-1.0 and under active development — breaking changes between versions are routine, not
exceptional. Training-data recall of its API is likely to be stale in exactly the way that looks
correct: a plausible macro invocation or trait bound that compiled against an earlier version and
silently doesn't against the one actually in use.

**Before writing gdext-specific code (a `#[derive(GodotClass)]`, `#[godot_api]` block, signal
registration, an exported property, or any other gdext macro/trait), check the version actually
pinned in the project's `Cargo.toml`, then verify the API against:**

- `https://docs.rs/gdext` — pin the query to the pinned version, not `/latest`, if the two differ.
- `https://godot-rust.github.io/book` — the official book; tutorials and patterns change with the
  crate, so prefer the version-matched section over a remembered pattern.

If a build fails on a gdext API call that looks like it should work, the first hypothesis is a
version mismatch between what's remembered and what's pinned — check the docs at the pinned version
before assuming the code is wrong.

Do not treat this skill as a place to cache gdext API details for next time. Anything gdext-specific
written here would go stale the same way recall does — the whole point is redirecting to a source
that stays current on its own.