Oh boy, guess i quickly jumped to conclusion, so i apologize if offened you with my stupidity.
The only time i need to edit meta.json inside var is when i wanna remove dependencies from it (and that is rarely).
To get rid of "red missing xyz" on loading without having to unpackage var files and have them all as local content or even worse, download stuff i don't use.
However I never had any need to manually add stuff inside meta (at this point that is my understanding...you are trying to do? or i am stupid again?).
Anyway i just asumed you wanna delete stuff manually based on your msg above (you did mentioned sub-dependencies..stupid me).
But after looking at meta.json of your "The Cat" v1,2,3 i see mess of dependecies you have in v1 meta.
Also json incomplete, viewer drops error and stops tree around 2 extra close bracets,
but again clear line 65 & 66 and json fixed (not trashed "in my opinion")
As for v2 and v3 json didn't show any phase errors and all you did is manually remove dependency.
(again i am not sure what are you tryin to do at this point...remove stuff from meta? or add? is package builder corrupting your meta?)
As for notepad++ i mostly use Dark style with good enough bracket highlight color, since everything is white by default (no dark mode).
As for highlighting incorrect bracket, no, there is are no such options builtin or plugin that im aware of.
The only builtin option is Highlighting completed bracket and search-jumping to other end or selecting all inside.
However there are some regex plugins, maybe that can helps you...i don't know regex, so yeah.
As for jsonviewer, yes it's only tree, but it drops error if json is incorrect and it stops entire tree around "dependency/line" where error is.
(easier to figure it out..that's what i meant by suggesting it)
As for JSTool it also has jsonviewer but you can navigate to each line/object from tree
(but doesn't show tree if json is incorrect, again thats why i suggested both of them)
There is also compare plugin i use (if you need to compare 2 files side by side).
Other plugins i use won't do you any use, so forget about it.
...anyway this discussion page is kinda going of course.
and i only wanted to point out about
already included "fix references" and
preset bug....so i just gonna quetly bounce out,
Apologies again! ?
@fubar_life123
PS. English is not my main language (grammar, typos and misunderstanding is common in my case)