Handcrafting JSON is undoubtedly always a pain, but the idea with XTQL is rather that it can be easily generated from any regular programming language.

> I would actively avoid utilizing any query language where I have to count brackets

That's really an editor/tooling problem, solvable in many ways, but I guess a Python-like/Parinfer approach would be your preference? (where whitespace/indentation is significant)