Skyrim plugin authoring

Decision order

1. Confirm a plugin is actually required. Prefer SPID, KID, SkyPatcher, FLM, BOS, CDF, or Papyrus runtime lookup when they express the change safely.
2. For typed record creation or overrides, prefer a Mutagen C# tool or Synthesis patcher pinned to the target game release.
3. For an existing plugin, load a workspace copy and preserve masters, flags, unknown subrecords, and override identity unless the plan explicitly changes them.
4. Use raw binary surgery only for a narrow, fully specified transformation with a parser, fixture tests, before/after structural audit, and byte-level diff. It is never the default writer.
5. If the selected typed library cannot represent the required record family, stop rather than improvising bytes.

Required inputs

• Target runtime and plugin type.
• Source plugin and required masters.
• Exact record plan with EditorIDs or resolved FormIDs.
• Save-compatibility requirements.
• Script and VMAD requirements.
• Expected new-record count and light-plugin eligibility.