I would like to change the default values for certain nodes so that our entire studio works in the same way and hopefully minimize clutter and mistakes.

For example anytime a user creates any type of light node in solaris I would like it to set the default prim path to /LIGHTS/$os as well as enable and set the LPE tag to $os.

In nuke this can be done by a python script that gets read at startup with for example this snippet: nuke.knobDefault('Transform.shutteroffset', '0')

In houdini the now "legacy" way to do it was the "save as permanent defaults" that creates an idx file which could be shared.
But this seems to not enable or store certain parameters like LPE tag. It's also now called legacy so I'm guessing it will be deprecated in the future.

The new way seems to be with receipts. But I don't see anyway to change the default values of existing nodes with it.
Instead it seems like I would have to create a tools receipt for each node I want to change and basically create a duplicate version of the node. This means I would have to create a copy of every light node and clutter up the tab menu and also open up the door for mistakes if a user puts down the normal node instead of the custom one.

How are other people/studios handling this?

In case anyone else comes across the same issue.

Sidefx support helped guide me in the right direction.
There info on this help page: https://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini/hom/locations.html#node_event_files [www.sidefx.com]

Beware that if you add an OnCreated script for a node that will override any already existing OnCreated scripts that might exist.
So you might have to do a Frankenstein and steal code from the existing OnCreated module and implement it into yours along with any new code to make it all work.