Then we need a single module that rolls this,strict, and warnings (and only optionally diagnostics) together with a short, catchy name so that we can tell initiates to simply add -MAID or use AID; to all of their scripts to catch lots of simple mistakes.

I suggested exactly this (and coded up a prototype) quite a while back, the name I came up with was

use caution;
#or
no caution;
[download]

But if you have a look at the responses I recieved on CLPM to my post(I didnt know about Perlmonks at the time) it was to say the least not a popular suggestion. However if you think it is a good idea I can have another look at it, and include 'fatal' with the defaults you suggest and post it here for review. (BTW I even reserved the namespace ex::caution on CPAN, but havent uploaded it yet. sigh.)

Yves / DeMerphq
--
When to use Prototypes?