Hey Jake, what Live are you using? On 10.1 if I load up any project the Save functionality is disabled until I make a change (like tweaking a parameter knob in any plugin or change the mixer, etc)…
And yes to use a dummy parameter or resetting a non-dummy one can be a solution but that just sounds too bad. (Also I didn’t check but if I set an existing parameter to the exact same value, maybe the host won’t recognize it as a change and won’t make the project dirty. So I thought maybe I’ll need to change it then change back for proper notification. This thought discouraged me even to try it as it sounds so bad I thought better to ask here maybe someone has a proper solution 
