As no one has answered you yet, I will at least give you a reply. I cannot help on how to code that, but you need for the skin to refresh and reload itself from my experience.
I have made some changes in AM which have been instant, I have made changes where you need to go back and then go in for changes to be visible, and then for a lot of stuff a shut down of AM and reload always is best.
I pretty much always make a change and then shut down AM and then reload it, as I found that sometimes I was getting frustrated that something was not working and then I remember that I needed to shut down.
If this was me, I would look at other themes and look at their nutfile, and see if that theme does what you want it to do and then just copy the code and edit as needed.
Sorry this is not much help, but better to have the village idiot, than no one.
Regards
Mark