/godot-auditor

Aurelius Protocol: Ui Theming NEVER List

• NEVER create StyleBox in _ready() for many nodes — Instantiating StyleBoxFlat.new() 100 times creates 100 unique objects. Use a Theme resource for shared heritage.
• NEVER forget theme inheritance — Parent themes are ignored if a child has its own theme. Apply themes at the root and use theme_type_variation for specific overrides.
• NEVER hardcode colors in StyleBox — Use theme.get_color() to maintain a single source of truth for your palette.
• NEVER use add_theme_override for global styles — This is brittle. Define styles in a Theme resource for automatic propagation across the project.
• NEVER modify theme resources during _draw() OR _process() — Frequent layout recalculations will severely degrade performance.
• NEVER assign StyleBoxEmpty to focus styles without a fallback — This invisibly breaks controller/keyboard navigation [1]. Always provide a visible alternative (e.g. scale change).
• NEVER use standard set() for theme properties — Calling node.set("font_color", red) fails. You MUST use the dedicated add_theme_color_override() API [3].
• NEVER use expand_margin_* to increase clickable area — It only expands the VISUAL bounds. Use content_margin_* on the StyleBox or adjust the Control's size to ensure input works [5].
• NEVER define StyleBoxes as local variables inside _draw() — They will be garbage collected before the RenderingServer can finish drawing them [7]. Store at class level.
• NEVER duplicate scenes/themes just to change one color — Use theme_type_variation to create lightweight derived styles (e.g. "DangerButton") within the same Theme [8].
• NEVER skip corner_radius_all shortcut — It's a useful shorthand for uniform rounding in StyleBoxFlat.