mkosi uses GNU tar with --xattrs --pax-option=delete=atime,delete=ctime,delete=mtime to create OCI tar layers. This produces PAX extension headers that composefs-rs's custom Rust tar parser can't handle correctly. composefs-rs has an open issue (#2) acknowledging their "home-brew header handling code" needs PAX cleanup, but no fix is imminent.
The test script workaround sidesteps PAX headers but is lossy: