while having to export the structure with a dispenser, lever and specific settings is cute and all, this is severely limited by the amount of unbreakable blocks in the modpack 😹

Could you clarify? What would be the applications of this?

• making pre-activated portals part of a spawn structure (personal intended use-case)
• using them with custom terrain decorators to randomly generate active portals
• letting packmakers configure portals made out of common blocks that are impossible to activate unless obtained through a method utilizing nbtfiles (example: https://files.catbox.moe/j0loyz.webm , where the portal is spawned using Capsules and the dumb workaround in the screenshot above)

I'm still not sure how this would be implemented. Could you give me an example of how this would work?

uhh, structure blocks let you specify generation features in nbtfiles using Data tags, that could potentially (probably) be used to generate "attuned" and functional portals

So nonstandard gen placing an "Active" portal gives a portal that just goes to dim -1, versus that same gen placing an inactive frame with immediate portal activation attached to link where intended?

Thus, wouldn't this be solved by having the portal use trigger check and notice the destination link is unassigned and, say, check an nbt flag on the block for where the backup initialization should link?

The problem is that at the moment, portal data is stored separately from block data because portals don't have tile entities.

How about a command to save/place portals?

that could work, actually

I'll come up with something for the next release.