Chutney is an opinionated test tool based upon the practice of Specification by Example.
Chutney is not a replacement for tools like Cucumber, etc. While having some overlap,they all fill different test aspect.The key difference is the absence of glue and support code.we think that having glue code is cumbersome and adds unnecessary levels of indirectionbetween the features and the system under test, especially for high level tests anddistributed softwares.
We also do think that using Cucumber for low level testing is sometimes very handy anduseful, thanks to the high level of expression provided by Gherkin (and this is part of theTesting Iceberg Seb Rose talked about).Chutney is no silver-bullet, it is just a tool which promotes and supports one way of doingsoftware testing.
As such, to benefit from it, we highly advise you to be proficient or to document your selfabout Behaviour-Driven-Development (by Dan North), Specification by Example (by GojkoAdzic) and Living Documentation (by Cyrille Martraire). All of which, however you call it,define the same practices and share the same goals.
Global understanding of Test Driven Development and knowledge about UbiquitousLanguage (from Domain Driven Design, by Eric Evans) is also valuable.