What JSON Lines is
JSON Lines is one complete JSON object per line, with no enclosing array and no commas between records. The file is not valid JSON as a whole, and that is the point.
Log pipelines, machine learning datasets and anything that appends records or reads them in a stream.
What TOML is
TOML is a configuration format with explicit types and a table syntax, designed to be unambiguous where YAML is clever.
Rust and Python projects, and anything with a pyproject.toml or Cargo.toml.
What changes when you convert JSON Lines to TOML
Each line is parsed on its own, so a corrupt record does not take the file with it. Keys are unioned across lines in first-seen order, so a record missing a field leaves that cell empty rather than shifting the columns.
Each row becomes an entry in an array of tables. Keys are sanitised to bare keys where possible and quoted where not.
What carries over from JSON Lines to TOML
JSON Lines records 3 things about a table that TOML has no way to hold.
An empty cell and a missing one are the same thing in TOML, so a null and an empty string in the JSON Lines both come out blank and can no longer be told apart.
JSON Lines can hold a value that is itself a list or an object. TOML has only flat cells, so nested values are flattened into one cell rather than being spread across columns.
JSON Lines can be read one record at a time. TOML has to be complete before it means anything, so the whole table is held in memory while it is written and a file that gets cut off part way through is not partly usable - it is unusable.
Both formats record types, so numbers, booleans and nulls survive as themselves rather than as text.
The identifier 007 comes out of the TOML as 007. Reading it as a number would have made it 7, and an id that changes value is worse than one that stays text.
The role "Analyst, data" survives with its comma, in one cell rather than split across two. That is the first thing to check in any converted table, and the usual place a TOML file goes wrong.
The quotes around Jonah "Jo" Pryce are escaped with a backslash in the TOML.