Agavi is a Web Application Framework for PHP 5. While it lies in the nature of a framework to simplify the application development process, Agavi won't do that at any cost. The primary goals are flexibility, cleanliness and structure. You won't find HTML Form helper methods in Agavi (because they aren't necessary, we have something better, more on that later), and we use XML configuration files because we believe that they offer better structuring abilites than alternatives such as YAML. If you're looking for a solution that assists you in serious high-end development, that has smart and innovative solutions to common problems that haven't been solved properly before, and that encourages and enforces a clean development process to ensure your code remains maintainable and extensible, you've come to the right place.