prefs.js is modified by browser itself. And it contains lots of stuff by default already.
You can store your custom preferences in user.js file - Firefox will copy those to prefs.js at startup.
From your link:
The user.js[1] file is optional. If you have one whenever the application is started it will overwrite any settings in prefs.js with the corresponding settings from user.js.
prefs.js is modified by browser itself. And it contains lots of stuff by default already.
You can store your custom preferences in user.js file - Firefox will copy those to prefs.js at startup.
From your link:
[1] https://kb.mozillazine.org/User.js_file