Make sure you are not opening a duplicate.

• I have searched the issue tracker and did not find an issue describing my bug/feature.

Description of your suggestion.

Due to Minecraft adding new Item Components, you could add your own one, just for hydration.
It's pretty useful for mods with an item for multiple things, e.g Buckets

Hydration is basically data driven, just not by components.

Well, you can't change it on an ItemStack basis tho.
And other than that, having a more unified system would be nice.