I don't have good answers for the rest of your questions (I'm sure someone else can chime in), but I do have some information about this.  You're correct in that, currently, the only process that will reflect the new or reloaded tool is the one the admin user was actually interacting with.  While it doesn't solve your problem right now, I've been working on new mechanisms for reloading tools and generally interacting with multiple processes that will be available soon.

-Dannon