headless-godot

Rules for making headless Godot (4.2+) development reproducible, avoiding drift and environment-specific failures.

Scope:

• Godot 4.2+ (Godot 3.x is out of scope)

Required rules (highest priority):

• Always use --headless --path <PROJECT_DIR> (removes cwd dependency)
• Always capture logs: 2>&1 | tee logs/<name>.log
• In sandbox/CI, or after user:// / XDG write failures, use project-local XDG_DATA_HOME, XDG_CONFIG_HOME, and XDG_CACHE_HOME
• Never edit .tscn as raw text (edits must go through --headless --script)
• For repeated validation commands, standardize them as tools/*.sh; after manual tweaks, re-run via the same scripts
• If res://tools/godot_apply_patch.gd is missing, copy .agents/skills/headless-godot/tools/godot_apply_patch.gd to <PROJECT_DIR>/tools/godot_apply_patch.gd before running patch commands
• Keep startup smoke and logic tests separate: smoke starts run/main_scene; run_tests.gd holds project-specific logic checks

If you get stuck, provide:

• Full command lines and logs/*.log
• godot --version output
• Whether export_presets.cfg exists (when exporting)