You say that swat is wrapper around prove and that is true. But what wrong with that? Swat uses prove to run tests. But this only one small "part" of swat , the main "part" of swat is DSL to allow one creates smoke tests for web application in quite fast and simple way. This DSL does not relate to prove at all . Please read my docs to see what this DSL is. And then let's compare with other modules , it would be interesting.