Recently, I’ve stopped exporting gizmos altogether. Instead, I leave them as Groups and simply change the file extension from .nk to .gizmo. On top of that, I’m slowly converting my entire collection of third-party tools into Groups as well.

This approach has a ton of pros. First, you don’t have to hunt down and package custom tools when sharing a script, which is a massive lifesaver for anyone using relative paths who doesn’t want to mess around with archiving or asset collection. The internals are always exposed, allowing you to tweak something inside on the fly — and only within that specific instance, without breaking anything else. Most importantly, an old, working script won’t crash or break the look when the global gizmo gets updated to a newer version, especially when you’re in emergency mode right before a deadline.

The cons, naturally, stem from the pros. You can’t update or patch everything across all scripts in one fell swoop. A Group masquerading as a gizmo gets baked right into the .nk script and becomes part of it once added — though that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Heavy gizmos/groups will bloat your project file size. Plus, someone with clumsy fingers might dig too deep inside and break the whole setup.

On the flip side, what already works will continue to work predictably, and what doesn’t work will end up being replaced manually anyway, so the concept is highly viable. The only real thing you’ll need to keep a close eye on is version control.