Watch

watch rebuilds your Lua incrementally on every TypeScript change. Run it in the editor's integrated terminal and leave it running while you work; the Defold editor picks up each rebuild.

bunx @defold-typescript/cli watch

What it does

watch holds one long-lived transpile session and re-reads and rewrites only the files you actually edit, skipping the re-glob and re-read of unchanged sources, so a rebuild after a save is near-instant. Each source under src/ becomes exactly one output, the same mapping build uses: a lifecycle-factory file becomes a Defold component (src/main.ts -> src/main.ts.script), a plain module becomes a Lua module (src/util.ts -> src/util.lua). Adding or removing a factory switches the artifact kind, and watch prunes the stale alternative so a kind switch never leaves the old output behind.

Keep Defold open on the same project folder you run watch in, and run the game from the editor after a rebuild completes.

Keeping the extension surface current

watch re-runs resolve whenever you save game.project, re-materializing .defold-types/extensions/ from the declared [dependencies]. It does not bootstrap that surface: run resolve once before watch so the initial extension types exist; watch only reconciles later [dependencies] edits.

Flags

• --json — stream the build lifecycle as newline-delimited JSON for agents and scripts. See Agent runbooks for the event stream.

As a mise task

If you use mise, the scaffolded mise.toml exposes the loop as mise run defold-typescript:watch. Like build, it carries no version tag, so bunx resolves the @defold-typescript/cli that init pinned as a devDependency — the version locked alongside your @defold-typescript/types.