2nd June 2025 - Link Blog
Directive prologues and JavaScript dark matter (via) Tom MacWright does some archaeology and describes the three different magic comment formats that can affect how JavaScript/TypeScript files are processed:
"a directive"; is a directive prologue, most commonly seen with "use strict";.
/** @aPragma */ is a pragma for a transpiler, often used for /** @jsx h */.
//# aMagicComment is usually used for source maps - //# sourceMappingURL=<url> - but also just got used by v8 for their new explicit compile hints feature.
Recent articles
- A new feature for my blog, built using my voice - 9th October 2026
- Claude Haiku 5.5 - 7th October 2026
- We're going to need default hard budget caps on pretty much everything - 3rd October 2026
- OpenAI DevDay 2026 live blog - 29th September 2026