-preloaded should allow patching since a given cutoff

When using the -preloaded switch, how about allowing it to have an argument to indicate that the workspace is partially preloaded. If, for example, the workspace was saved as of 1/1/2025 you could tell -preloaded to only ignore files that were saved prior to that date. You might use -preloaded=1/1/2025 to indicate this, for instance. But if a few of the files had been last changed since that date, then it would load those files normally.

Another syntax might be -preloaded=* which could indicate using the loaded workspace's own timestamp as the cutoff date, rather than a specific date, and only files changed since the workspace was saved would be loaded as new/changed while the bulk of them would be considered as unchanged from the saved copy of the workspace.