Why does IDE support matter for using Lombok effectively?

Since Lombok's generated methods only exist after annotation processing runs during compilation, an IDE without Lombok awareness sees only the source file as literally written — no getters, no setters, no generated constructor — and will flag every call to a Lombok-generated method as an error, even though the project compiles and runs perfectly fine from the command line.

Beyond avoiding false error highlighting, proper IDE support also enables:

• Code completion suggesting the generated methods as you type
• "Navigate to declaration" jumping to the field/annotation responsible, since there's no literal method body to jump to
• Refactoring tools (rename field, find usages) correctly tracking the generated methods too

Without this, working in a Lombok-heavy codebase in an unsupported editor is a genuinely frustrating experience — constant red squiggly lines for code that's actually correct — which is why the plugin is considered close to mandatory for serious day-to-day Lombok use, even though it isn't required for the build itself to succeed.