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
- Reverse engineering some updates to Claude - 31st July 2025
- Trying out Qwen3 Coder Flash using LM Studio and Open WebUI and LLM - 31st July 2025
- My 2.5 year old laptop can write Space Invaders in JavaScript now, using GLM-4.5 Air and MLX - 29th July 2025