> write down everything you're doing in a reproducible way

Making `pip install` context-sensitive (dependent on the current working directory) would reduce reproducibility. Imagine the instructions to a beginner: (1) download, (2) cd, (3) pip install. Many times the beginner will skip step 2 or accidentally wind up in the wrong directory.

I really think the average beginner is not somebody who knows nothing about packaging, but someone like me who knows a lot about other packaging systems. When I started with pip a few months ago, everything was confusing, largely because pip has confusing conventions that don't match tools like bundler, cargo, and npm that I'm more familiar with.

I do think you're misrepresenting the instructions to the beginner. The instructions to the beginner are (1) download (2) cd (3) run tox.

Beginners shouldn't even need to know what pip is, tox (or another build tool) should handle everything for you.

> The average beginner is ... someone like me

When I say "beginner" I mean someone who is learning their first programming language and may have never opened Terminal or `cmd.exe` before.

> run tox

I thought the argument above was that the command should be `pip install`. This is confusing.

> Beginners shouldn't even need to know what pip is

Ok, in that case, why do you care whether `pip install` has an implicit default mode?

My preference would be that pip install only has one mode. Realistically, there is going to be backwards compatibility stuff, but ideally, even in advanced use you should never have a reason to use anything other than pip install, and the rest should be specified in config files.

You could write a make file that does the install. That'd solve the one-command desire.