Standalone addons like GMod?

Hey everyone,

Coming from a Garry's Mod background, I've been diving into s&box to build a simple item addon — an electronic cigarette, nothing crazy. But the more I explored the project system, the more I realized something fundamental is missing, at least from my perspective.

In GMod, you could create a standalone addon — a folder dropped into the addons directory — that would hook into any server, any gamemode, without touching the gamemode's code. Swep, entity, HUD element, whatever. It just worked alongside everything else. A vape item ? Totally doable. No forks, no PRs, no merge conflicts.

In s&box, from what I understand, every "game" is essentially a self-contained project. There's no shared runtime between games, so if I build a vape item and someone runs a DarkRP server, my item can't interact with their current system — because we're two completely separate projects. The only workaround seems to be either contributing directly to the gamemode's repo, or just rewriting everything inside the same project.

So my question is: is there any plan to introduce a proper cross-game addon/plugin system? Something like:

- Standalone packages that can be imported or enabled by any game project
- A shared API or interface layer that addon creators and gamemode devs can both target
- Something equivalent to GMod's workshop addon compatibility model

I think this is pretty important for the ecosystem, especially for roleplay-oriented games like DarkRP clones where the whole appeal is a rich ecosystem of compatible community content.

Is this on the roadmap? Has Facepunch talked about this anywhere? Would love to hear if others have found workarounds or if I'm missing something obvious.

Thanks

AFAIK, there's nothing stopping game creators from supporting that (retrieving and using sandbox entities/dupes in their own games)?

But it has to be implemented on a per-game basis. S&box is more like an engine, it's lower-level compared to GMod, so I don't know if it's feasible to have "standalone universal addons."

A huge part of GMOD's success is the huge trove of user generated content that is practically plug n play into any type of gamemode you plan to make. It's also an untapped market for people to be rewarded for making good models, weapons, etc. 

If you want to know why AI is so enticing it's because hiring people to do that type of stuff is very expensive with no guarantee on return. If devs could promise something like 1% of their fund for using some of their models then it costs them nothing up front and if the game becomes popular both are rewarded.