You are wise. I usually "inline" my Template/Alloy template in the __DATA__ (with blocks representing different wrappers/fragments) of a one-off so it ends up being both fast to write and easy to break out if I have to later. I like CGI::Application and I think it's one of the right ways to do it; for me personally it falls between too little (doesn't cover what Catalyst does) and too much (I can write dispatch table and such for a straightforward CGI in a few minutes).