Fair enough. I indeed _haven't_ used rauth, just read the docs. And indeed, OAuthLib's requests shim is a bit rough in terms of tests and docs, but the OAuth1 use-case is quite solid—it doesn't do the dance for you, but every subsequent request is the bulk of the work (in my experience). For that application, the API's seem pretty similar to me—you can instantiate a requests session with a set OAuth auth object and make requests like "session.get(some_uri)" without the magical per-service mapping.

I guess I just feel like tying to one specific service is too specialized. Libraries like requests should be providing you with enough primitives to be flexible and enough abstraction to be "simple," though we clearly disagree on what constitutes the appropriate balance.