It seems like generating some data structure definitions (similar to a protobuf) and checking them in along with the code would be useful? Then the compiler can

It seems like generating some data structure definitions (similar to a protobuf) and checking them in along with the code would be useful? Then the compiler can tell you when they still match, or you made an incompatible change to the code. This seems like a situation where defining the data structure in two different ways might be good?