ATM I do not see any obvious way to get a list of options supported by a special remote of a given type.

manpage says

   The remote's configuration is specified by the parameters passed to this command. Different types of special remotes need  different  configura‐
   tion values. The command will prompt for parameters as needed.

and indeed I get asked for e.g. encryption to be explicitly specified (why not to default to none). But it would not even complain if I specify some bogus (mistyped etc) option. I do not see any way (tried different --help's etc) to figure out what options any given special remote actually supports without going online to e.g. https://git-annex.branchable.com/special_remotes/rsync/ for rsync special remote. It makes configuration of special remotes not a trivial matter for new users. IMHO there should be some way (mentioned in man of initremote and enableremote) to get information about supported by the remote options, e.g. git annex getremoteopts TYPE or alike. I am not sure how it should/would work for custom special remotes since I think protocol ATM doesn't support querying for a list of configuration options. May be GETCONFIG interface command could be extended to return a list with of options with description? or some new command be added?

done as eg git annex initremote type=rsync --whatelse.

External special remotes that implement LISTCONFIGS can also be queried:

git annex inittype type=external externaltype=foo --whatelse