Yep, you are right - I think our previous implementation would be better described as a "typical HTTP Rails JSON API." As I briefly alluded in the article, we

Yep, you are right - I think our previous implementation would be better described as a "typical HTTP Rails JSON API." As I briefly alluded in the article, we actually initially had a hypertext-driven API using RFC 6570 URI templates, but had to eventually change designs to increase performance for mobile apps. Payloads needed to be smaller and we couldn't afford the extra requests necessary to traverse the endpoints. But yes, I agree, what is commonly called "REST" isn't usually.