How do you absorb Paper API version drift without breaking users scripts?

[RaidenTechnology]

This is not a support request — I'm not using Skript and I don't have a bug. I'm writing a scripting language for the same platform from the other end, and I'd like to learn from the mistakes you've already paid for.

Context, briefly. I wrote RaidenScript, a small embeddable language in C (bytecode VM, MIT) and bridged it into a Paper plugin over JNI. The rule layer of my RPG plugin now lives in one script file that hot-reloads at runtime instead of being compiled into the jar. Skript solved this problem years before I started and picked a very different surface — English-like natural syntax, where I went with explicit syntax and a VM. Repo, only so you can see what "the other end" means: https://github.com/RaidenTechnology/raidenscript

The question: when the Paper API shifts under you between Minecraft versions, how do you absorb it without breaking script authors' files?

The concrete case that bit me: my plugin compiles against paper-api 1.21 but runs on a newer server, and a material name had moved (CHAIN -> IRON_CHAIN). On the Java side that's a one-line fix. On the script side it isn't — every user script mentioning the old name is now silently wrong, and the script author never signed up to care about Minecraft versions in the first place.

So, three things I'd genuinely like to hear from people who've lived with this for years:

1. Do you alias old names inside Skript so old scripts keep working, deprecate them on a schedule, or let them fail loudly with a clear error?
2. Is there a deliberate compatibility layer between Skript's syntax surface and the Bukkit/Paper API, or does the syntax reach the API more or less directly?
3. With hindsight — is a syntax surface that stays stable across Minecraft versions a promise you'd make again, or is it the single thing that costs you the most maintenance?

If this has been answered before, a link to the issue or docs page is a perfectly good answer and I'll go read it. Thanks for keeping Skript community-maintained this long — the fact that there's a 17-person org to ask is itself the reason I'm asking here rather than guessing.

[sovdeeth]

It's a little insulting to ask for help from a '17-person organization' by making an ai do it for you. You can at least write the question yourself.

We don't protect users against changes to things like item names. The user is responsible for those changes between mc versions, Slript just uses whatever item names are provided.

We had a full alias system but it was a significant amount of maintenance and caused many bugs from forgetting to adding x or y item, so we dropped it about a year and a half ago.