What is the importance of self-descriptive messages in REST?

Each request and response should have enough metadata (headers, content type, status

codes) to describe how to process it, without external context.

👉 Example in ASP.NET Core:

return Ok(new

Id = 1,

Name = "John",

Links = new[] { new { Rel = "self", Href = "/users/1" } }

});

Here, the response describes itself (content type = JSON, includes resource links).