FWIW, as a plugin developer and freelancer, I go quiet when I see two conflicting statements from a potential client.
If it’s not a problem, why are you asking for help with it? I don’t mean to be argumentative. My typically vetting process has me asking feasibility and complexity questions that these two statements complicate.
Just a recommendation, I would look to get away from that process as much as possible and use the decorateWidget process. That will keep you from blowing up on every update and costing you money to pay a freelancer to make changes each time.