I assume Studio is engine agnostic. My question is whether this will cause issues with xaml that refer to images or other xaml using keys that aren't paths. So, for example, in Unity we might use an Addressable Address instead of an Asset/ relative path. It seems pretty hard to use Blend or the Noesis Code plugin when the image and xaml references aren't static and I assume this will extend to Studio.

The core implementation of Studio supports setting custom providers, which load assets from the specified URI. Unity and Unreal integrations implement these providers, and this approach could potentially be extended to accommodate your suggestion.

In general, Studio is created to allow designers to drag and drop assets directly from the filesystem (the asset browser in Studio is just a folder in the filesystem), such as dragging an image or selecting a font in a TextBlock. While it is technically possible for designers to specify custom paths manually, this approach might not be user-friendly.

Please note that everything related to this feature is still in the experimental phase. We’re open to feedback and happy to discuss further.

What are your thoughts?

My feeling is that addressables in Unity should be handled at a much lower level than Studio or XAML.

Yes, I agree with you. Studio and XAML shouldn't be aware of Addressables.

The Noesis's providers API has been sufficient to do everything we need to runtime.

I've been ripping on hooking things up in Noesis by hand, so I haven't had time to grab studio and try it out, but I will. I can comment further after that. My original post on this was before I really got into things deeply and understood how the providers work.