I built an office shed in my back yard. Almost all the grass is gone where I walk between the back door and the shed. I do this fairly frequently, but I’d think still quite a bit less than an even lightly trafficked hiking path.

I’ll put some stepping stones out there eventually.

Nope. I fiddle until it does what I want. If the thing I’m working on is complex or I’m struggling with it I’ll keep versions of configs. And I back up working configs via an rsync job. Which isn’t a particularly robust solution but I’m content with it for my needs.