TDD Assessment

Core pruning logic (compactData / pruneValue / isEmpty) is well-tested. The 9 subtests cover the meaningful behaviors (null stripping, key stripping, self-link detection, recursion, empty-map collapse, top-level arrays, no-op default). Coverage is sufficient overall.

Two gaps worth noting:

1. Array items that prune to {} are not dropped (untested behavior gap)

pruneValue on a slice appends all items unconditionally — including items that become empty after pruning. The map-value path does call isEmpty and drops the result, but the array path does not:

case []any:
    result := make([]any, 0, len(val))
    for _, item := range val {
        result = append(result, pruneValue(item))  // no isEmpty check
    }
    return result

If you have an array of user objects that only contained avatarUrls + self (which gets stripped), they'd become {} entries in the output array. The existing test cases don't hit this because every array item has at least one surviving field.

This is either a silent bug or an intentional choice to preserve array length/indices. Either way it's undocumented and untested — worth a comment in the code and a test case covering it.

2. --compact no-op on table/plain mentioned in the PR description but not tested

It's true by implementation (only View.JSON() checks v.Compact), but a short test would make it a contract rather than a coincidence.

Neither gap is a blocker — just items to address before they become bugs in the field.

Both addressed in 69254e4:

1. Empty array items — array path now uses the same wasNonEmpty && isEmpty guard as the map-value path. Items that become {} after pruning are dropped; originally-empty items are preserved.

2. table/plain no-op — added two tests (compact is no-op for table format, compact is no-op for plain format) making this a tested contract.

Also fixed the self-link heuristic to match any HTTP(S) URL (not just /rest/) per the automated review, and added a test preserving originally-empty arrays ("labels": []) per the enforcement reviewer's catch.