So, over the years we addressed the int overflow problem in different ways. Initially, we had some targeted code that would convert integers over the limit into strings. The was done only in a few places that were known to return large ints.
The most recent case of overflow was a bit messier, and we went with a more systematic approach. We also discovered the i8 tag, which was had not previously known about (and may not have existed when we first implemented the earlier solution).
When we started using the i8 tags, it was late in our release cycle, and we didn't want to break
existing code that might rely on those values being strings. So, we opted to leave those older parts alone for the time being.
If you want a quick test, the echo call will give you whatever data you pass in.