...but you can’t convey the dist, build, meta, make, synopsis, spelling, OS, tests, author tests, env, CI, repos, deps, manifest, versioning, dev versioning, et cetera to someone who doesn’t even know what those things are; and if you automate it, it’s a kind of cargo-culting.

This is certainly true. But people who don't know what those things are wouldn't be the target audience for the tutorial I have in mind. I think dzil needs a tutorial which is written for people who don't know what Dist::Zilla is and how it can help them with these tasks if they emerge at all. I may well have missed something, but the documentation of Perl itself ends at perlnewmod and perlmodstyle, and this is the point where I'd love a tutorial to start off. The step by step guide in perlnewmod starts with "Start with module-starter or h2xs", and Perlmonks features How to make a CPAN Module Distribution with similar stuff. I'd like people to be enabled (neither pushed nor forced) to start with dzil new.

This is also a matter of personal preferences. I accept quite some cargo-culting when there's just a tiny chance of missing the point where the alternatives start to get cumbersome. On occasion, this pays off: The AutoPrereqs plugin alone saved me so much time that it was totally worth the migration from module-starter which I had used before. A tutorial as nysus started to write would have made my path easier.