"Automate everything" is a disingenuous claim. You're simply replacing a couple of lines of scikit-learn with a couple of lines of your CLI tool. There is pretty much no benefit to using this.
The title is a complete misnomer, but the project itself is perfectly useful. As a programmer, any programming I _don't_ have to do is time and money saved.
Also there are new features that I'm working on. The stable release was done this week.
Second, I must disagree that most other common frameworks are imperative. I would say it's a mix of declarative & imperative but certainly not imperative.
Finally, it's interesting how you see this as a just abstraction tool. I find other ML frameworks are more about abstraction since you are focusing on building your model but all details are hidden from you using the framework. Sure, igel is also about abstraction but to say it's JUST abstraction? mmm I find it not quite right, instead it's more about automating the stuff that you would write yourself using other frameworks.
At the end of the day, we all have different opinions and feedback is important ;)