Think I've found a decent Minetest workflow for the tiny games I want to build.

  1. Add SpawnBuilder and Modgen to a vanilla game.
  2. Create a custom mod for game specific stuff.
  3. Build the setting in the generated world.
  4. Export the setting with Modgen.
  5. Copy vanilla Minetest removing unused mods and adding metadata.
  6. Copy the Modgen export into the custom game together with the custom mod.
  7. Test and revise.

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Phil Rees