I think un-zipping response bodies is very useful when provided together with response templates.

The scenario to think about is such that we create new unit tests by first recording responses from live services. When the response is gzipped, replay scenario should just work since the layer above understands gzipped responses.

The un-zipping comes into play when we need to turn returned responses into templates as part of creating new unit tests. We would unzip the recorded response body and turn that into a template. When we want a particular response to be returned, the framework needs to render a response template with specific parameters and return the resulting response. Now, we need the response body to be gzipped again to be returned to the layer above, and that is the part which is currently missing. Our response templates need to store some kind of flag indicating that the un-zipped response should be gzipped when sent back to the layer above.

Let's talk more about the design when we meet next time after you get your machine salvaged.