So far, I've only been able to figure this out empirically. Things which only affect search-time operations, such as macros.conf, props.conf, and most things in transforms.conf don't seem to need a restart. Changes to savedsearches.conf likely will need a restart, as these searches become REST(?) endpoints for queries to Splunkd. Things which affect server state, such as licensing changes, web server configuration, etc, all require restart. Updating views or navigation does not, see here (answers.splunk.com)
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