jq is like sed for JSON data - you can use it to slice and filter and map and transform structured data with the same ease that sed, awk, grep and friends let you play with text.

jq is written in portable C, and it has zero runtime dependencies. You can download a single binary, scp it to a far away machine of the same type, and expect it to work.

jq can mangle the data format that you have into the one that you want with very little effort, and the program to do so is often shorter and simpler than you'd expect.