You could, for example, compile AOT to a JSON file and build everything deterministically from there. Tell devs to not edit that JSON directly. I believe NPM and Yarn do something similar.
>compile AOT to a JSON file and build everything deterministically from there
you want the dev that develops zellij to AOT compile all settings (that they set using rust as you imagine) to a JSON file that is then... what by end users? inspected but not edited? how would settings change then?