> Serialization isn't the only issue - you have to know how to
> deserialize as well.

I think this is pretty much besides the point. IntEnums are meant to be substitutible with plain ints, so you can deserialize as a plain int.

Moreoven, JSON doesn't fill the same use cases as pickle: it is meant to communicate with services written in any languages, and those services won't have the same enum mnemonics as your Python library.