Context: I build a lot like this.

This involves a lot of upside down stair placement, with varying faces I'm looking at. I was trying to write a hex to do it for me, as a baby step I wanted it to do build-to-me like DW20's Building Gadgets can. I cannot get it to respect the height I'm watching.

Reproduction:

Take a stair block.

Mark a location to place it.

I'm using a hexal macro here but it's just Mind's, Compass, Mind's, Alidade, Archers, Mind's Compass, Mind's, Alidade, Architect's, Addition.

Face upward.

Place it.

By vanilla placement rules, that stair block should have been upside down (because I'm looking at the underside of a block) but it isn't.

does place block respect general look direction ? if so then it should be standardized one way or the other. Otherwise I wouldn't expect it to use the look direction at all, since that'd be strange behavior for something like a circle to change how it places based on your look direction.

if you're on fabric you could use https://modrinth.com/mod/hexkinetics for rotating the block into the direction you want.

it does account for look direction - Steve made a bedrock breaker at one point which uses that behaviour.