I haven't read through the whole discussion in detail, so I'm sure I repeat some of what has been said already, but here is my point of view. 1. Yes, Grok is pretty implicit. If it's soo implecit is a matter of taste, but much of the implicitness makes sense. You typically do have a model and a view and a template, and the model and view are typically in one module, and has a name similar to the template. That implicitness however only makes sense in the specific context of web applications. There is no reasonably way to have that implicitness with components and adapters. So a configuration for the ZCA in general can't be implicit. 2. That doesn't mean we can't use grok-style configuration though. 3. Although Python 3 means we can't. We'll have to use decorators. 4. zope.interface already does, and zope.component will as well, once it's ported. That means we get things like: class IMyFace(Interface): whatevah class IMyFeet(Interface): something @implementer(IMyFace) class MyFace(object): yeahyeah @adapter(IMyFace, IMyFeet) class FootInMouth(object): def __init__(self, mouth, foot): pass The @adapter decorator so far only handles functions, but will be extended to classes once we port zope.component. I think also adapter today will only mark the object as adapts(...) does, but you will still use zcml to register the adapter. So probably we still need @adapter (as it already exists) and also another decorator (say @adapt() maybe?) that will both mark the class and register it in the registry, and hence do the same as the <adapter ... /> directive does today. Then we have subscriber, utility, resource and view directives. There's no particular reason I know of that means they couldn't be class decorators as well. That takes care of most of the configuration needed for the ZCA itself. How to deal with the rest probably gets more obvious once we've done this. //Lennart