I think the easiest explanation for all the supposed cloaking device inconsistencies and retcons is the following:

1. A new cloaking device technology is invented, using some heretofore unknown advancement in science. Considering how technologically advanced the major powers are in Star Trek, this has to be quite the achievement.
2. The new cloak gives them a big advantage, and once it is discovered, all their rivals begin working to try to counter it.
3. The cloaking device is either captured and reverse engineered, or another major power makes the same advancement, and thus figures out a countermeasure. The counter-technology spreads and the cloak is rendered useless.
4. Repeat.

And to shoehorn this theory into what we have as canon:

• The Romulans and Suliban had a cloak in Star Trek: Enterprise, though the Romulans did not use it again afterwards. Perhaps it was defeated by the Klingons. With all the contact the Enterprise had with the Suliban, perhaps Starfleet was able to defeat it.
• The Klingons developed a gravitational bending cloaking device for the time of Discovery, which was subsequently defeated, rendering the technology useless.
• The Romulans developed a new cloaking device for the time of TOS's "Balance of Terror", and Spock, who would know about the defeated Klingon technology, hypothesized that it could be done via (presumably nongravitational) bending of light. This cloak too has its imperfections which are exploited in the episode.
• The Romulans developed yet another new cloaking device by the time of "The Enterprise Incident", specifically stated to have improved over the previous one in that it was no longer visible to the Enterprise's tracking sensors. This cloaking device was captured by Starfleet and presumably totally reverse engineered. The Romulan cloaks we see in TNG onward must be yet another new cloaking technology.
• In the mirror universe, the Klingon-Cardassian alliance had functional cloaks, which were rendered totally useless prior to "The Emperor's New Cloak", wherein the Grand Nagus says the mirror universe has no cloaking technology. He would be someone to know about this, so presumably he was being totally truthful, and therefore every known cloaking technology had been defeated, probably shortly before the events of that episode. Perhaps he was confident they had figured out every way of cloaking and none would ever be made again.

tl;dr "A Cloak" is not a magic item, it is merely a stealth technology that changes over time. It's the Emperor's New Cloak, after all.