I would think something like this would work: cat input.json | jq -c --stream '. as $in | select(length == 2 and $in[0][0] == "users") | {}|setpath($in[0][1:

I would think something like this would work: cat input.json | jq -c --stream '. as $in | select(length == 2 and $in[0][0] == "users") | {}|setpath($in[0][1:]; $in[1])' > users.jsonlines Output would me a file that looks like this: {"userid1":{"name":"user1"}} {"userid2":{"name":"user2"}}