Yup, the short lived tokens are JWTs - wasn't sure how much detail to go into in the description.

For comparing to something like Kratos, probably the best way of putting it is, the first line of the quickstart guide for Kratos is "Ory Kratos has several moving parts and getting everything right from the beginning can be challenging" - and we want to provide the opposite initial experience. We want there to be an understandable UI for login + team management that you can interact with immediately and quickly configure. Kratos and Oathkeeper are really cool though, especially when you want to go significantly deeper in tuning things. As we add on more complexity, we want to make sure that that initial experience is still really walk up usable.