Reflection Overview

Reflection gives scripts and host tooling a controlled view of Vela metadata. It exists for host integration, diagnostics, admin tools, debuggers, editors, and hot reload checks.

What Reflection Can See

Reflection can query types, fields, methods, variants, traits, modules, functions, attributes, source origins, effect metadata, and permission metadata. It can also inspect the runtime type of a value.

fn main(player: Player) {
    let player_type = reflect::type_of(player);
    let fields = reflect::fields(player_type);
    let level = reflect::field(player, "level");
    return reflect::name(player_type);
}

Controlled Operations

Reflection can perform controlled reads, writes, and calls when the active policy permits them. Those operations still go through the same runtime and host access boundaries as normal script code.

Reflection is not a bypass around HostAccess, execution budgets, capability checks, read-only fields, or stale host reference validation.

What Reflection Cannot Do

Reflection cannot mutate type structure at runtime. It cannot add fields, remove methods, replace functions, monkey patch types, or evaluate generated source strings.

Versioned Metadata

Hot reload creates new registry snapshots. Reflection observes the registry for the relevant program version, which keeps active frames and tooling views stable while new calls move to the new version.