When to use ambient while searching for a type definition?

Question

I'm currently migrating from tsd to typings since it's deprecated. but It's not crystal clear when I need to use --ambient or not when looking for a definition.

Also: is it correct to say that the goal of typings, in the longterm, is to completely move away from ambiant declatation from DefintelyTyped and only rely on the typings registry?

Answer 1

but It's not crystal clear when I need to use --ambient

Always Ambient Stuff

Stuff that changes the nature of the global environment (eg node.d.ts ) will always be ambient .

Modules

For stuff that is a module (eg a node package like debug ) it can be converted into a typings module (and in fact has been) so you don't need --ambient .

However you can still use the definition from DefinitelyTyped if you use --ambient . Also if the conversion hasn't taken place to typings you can only use --ambient .