Stash Vertex Normals
Stash Vertex Normals is a Blender addon I wrote for saving and restoring the vertex normals on a mesh. It's meant to compensate
for Blender's lack of a "lock normals" option similar to Maya's. The addon allows you to store the normals as a color attribute, then copy that data back to the normals at a later time.
Get it for free on Github
https://github.com/pixelbutterfly/stash_vertex_normals/tree/main
Punch up your models that use tiling textures. Pop out some bricks on your wall or shingles on your roof, then restore the normals so the original shading is preserved.
Modeling with trimsheets requires working with straight edges and 90 degree angles. The addon allows you to store your normals, do a "wonkify" pass where you add interest to the silhouette, then restore your normals to get the original shading back.
Edit topology on a model with a baked normal map. Use this to get many shape variations out of the same baked model.
Preserve normals on models that have been split into pieces.
A common example is a character model where the head needs to be separated from the body. Stash the normals, separate the pieces, and restore the normals.