when is considered to be particularly confusing, as it does two different things:
when ("foo") {...} # means: if ($_ ~~ "foo")
when ( constant() ) {...} # means: if ($_ ~~ constant())
when ( somefunc() ) {...} # means: if (somefunc())
The rules for determining when there's an implicit "$_ ~~" in front of the condition usually do what you mean, but are very convoluted, so it's easy to shoot yourself in the foot.
given has already changed in Perl 5.18 to use our $_ instead of my $_ (unless there's already a my $_ in the current lexical scope).
Smart match itself is likely to undergo some simplification. If you take a look at "Smartmatch operator" in perlop, you'll see basically a dispatch table of all the different types of matches it can attempt. This is likely to be cut down to just a handful.
package Cow { use Moo; has name => (is => 'lazy', default => sub { 'Mooington' }) } say Cow->new->name
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