<Why do I need to reference a custom gradle config...

# stackoverflow

[user]

Why do I need to reference a custom gradle config with square brackets?
I created a gradle build config just to download some dependencies. The documentation has been sparse, so I've piece together this working snippet based on random snippets and guesses.
configurations {
create("downloadDeps")
}

dependencies {
// JSON
configurations["downloadDeps"]("com.fasterxml.jackson.corejackson databind2.13.3")
configurations["downloadDeps"]("com.fasterxml.jackson.modulejackson module kotlin2.13.3")
}

repositories {
// internal repository...