You are right to an extent, but this is because this "shiny" has been transforming since it was introduced. Originally, it was meant as a central point to defi

You are right to an extent, but this is because this "shiny" has been transforming since it was introduced. Originally, it was meant as a central point to define your build system requirements [0]; for this purpose it needs to include only two lines: [build-system] # Minimum requirements for the build system to execute. requires = ["setuptools", "wheel"] # PEP 508 specifications. Then, package managers like pipenv and poetry started using it as a central place to storing other project metadata like dependencies, description etc. Most package managers now have their own versions of that functionality, and it is currently being standardised to a common form [1]. Finally, many other projects have started adding support for keeping its configurations in pyproject.toml. Some (like black) don't even support any other form, while others (like flake8, and until recently mypy) are resisting this trend; but it is already so prevalent that it can be considered the standard. [0] https://peps.python.org/pep-0518/ https://peps.python.org/pep-0518/ [1] https://peps.python.org/pep-0621/ https://peps.python.org/pep-0621/