I was just thinking about your question
This causes me to wonder how one could properly write a plugin for deployment having to rely on field keys which may vary from one installation to an other.
If I understand this right, you are creating a plugin but you’re using the editor to create the fields each time you use the plugin?
Why not instead export the fields as a JSON file and in your plugin use that file to create an identical field group, that way the field keys would be reliable. Even if this is for ACF4, you can register the field group with PHP with the same effect.
