The present invention defines a mechanism for automatic synchronization of scripting variables in an action tag extension facility. Attached to each action, there is a TagExtraInfo class that describes the action. The TagExtraInfo class knows the attributes of the class, including the names of the scripting variables introduced or modified by the action. At translation time, a tag handler accesses the information from the TagExtraInfo class for each tag in a page. At run time, a pageContext object is created containing a mapping of scripting variables to values. The values are visible to the scripting code, and the scripting code can modify the values. Also, the values are accessible by the action code. The action code can modify the values or create new values and assign the values to scripting variables so that the scripting code can modify them later. Thus, the present invention allows action tags to be created without explicit knowledge of the scripting language used to create a page.