I believe you can hook into the schema thingy these days! But I can't at the moment now find how to.. 🤔
Updating the json on install is not going to do anything, the site will need to be restarted after the settings have been updated since they're only read at startup.
Also, the json file is not the only place where you could put settings, so that's not always the right place - especially if you need to add secrets!