Stabbing the tyre itself is a gamble in terms of safety. Worst case the tyre basically explodes at you. cutting the stem doesn't risk the tyre zippering from a failure point, and is definitely the preferred method.
Feel free to stab and slice the sidewall once the pressure is released if you want to make the repair as expensive as possible
A translation layer could be used, no? Check api version, translate any v1 specific calls into their v2 counterparts, then submit the v2 request?