I have posted my finding before here:
For me editing the Metadata has no effect on the Homekit.json file, I have made at-least 100 changes to the metadata of my items since I first discovered the work around I use. its when I click save in HomeKit Add-on settings part of OpenHab that I lose integrity of the.json file.
Personally I make a backup of the .json file and replace it if my Items get stop responding. So far i’ve only needed to do this the first time I figured it out, and have since avoided making changes to the settings for HomeKit and thus far have not had this issue for more then 70 days now.
I am interested to know if anyone else can reproduce my findings. I don’t think it matters but I am running my OH Server on MacOS 10.14.6.