Exporting tables directly

Actually, they can:

export.whatever = nil

setmetatable(export, {
	__index = function (self, key)
		if key == 'whatever' then
			require('Module:debug').track('whatever')
			return whatever
		end
	end
})

But I agree, annotating these is a good idea.

That code snippet would be very useful to preserve on Category:Template tracking!