intertwingly

Suppose tool X claims that it requires feature Y.  The first question to ask is whether other tools have similar requirements.  Find out what is common.  Refactor.

Then see if what results is really required.  See if there are other ways of achieving the same goal which might be better.

If the requirement survives to this point, see if it would place an unreasonable burden on other tools to support this feature.  If not, the next stage is to see if we can agree to make the feature required.  Required is good.  It provides clear guidance as to what is expected.  It makes the results predictable.