Attributes

Attributes are @name (or @name(arg, arg, …)) annotations that attach to the declaration immediately following them. They control how a declaration is treated by primate or by generators.

@inline
type Bytes32 = u64

Multiple attributes on one declaration stack on separate lines:

@inline
@some_plugin_attr
type Color = u32

Argument syntax: literals ("strings", integers, booleans) or bare identifiers, comma-separated, in (). The @name(args) form is fully reserved at parse time, so plugins can introduce custom attributes without forking the parser.

@inline

Applies to type aliases. Suppresses the alias declaration in generated output and inlines the underlying type at every use site.

@inline
type Bytes32 = u64

Bytes32 BIG_HASH = 100KiB

In generated code, BIG_HASH is typed as the underlying u64-style representation in each target — no Bytes32 alias appears in the output.

Use @inline for very lightweight aliases where the name carries no generator-side meaning. For semantic aliases that benefit from showing up as a named type (e.g. Port), leave @inline off.

Custom attributes

Attribute names that don’t match a built-in emit a warning at parse time, not an error. Plugins receive every attribute on every declaration in their JSON request and decide how to interpret unknown names.

@cdn(url = "https://cdn.example.com")
url ASSET_BASE = "https://example.com/assets"

@cdn isn’t built-in; primate emits unknown-attribute (warning) and passes cdn(url="https://cdn.example.com") through to any generator that wants to act on it.

See Writing a generator for how to read attribute data inside a plugin.