As Metafizzy uses Gulp for running tasks, I write a lot of Gulp plugins. For example, here's a simple one to add a file's basename to the Vinyl file object.

var path = require('path');
var transfob = require('transfob');

gulp.src('content/*.hbs')
  // add basename data
  .pipe( transfob( function( file, enc, next ) {
    file.basename = path.basename( file.path, '.hbs' );
    next( null, file );
  })
  // ..

This plugin uses transfob, a tiny, no-dependency replacement for through2.obj. The name transfob comes from "Transform object." As I dug into through2's source and node's Stream Transform class, I discovered there wasn't much code needed to work with Gulp streams. It's in fact so small, I can include its entire source code here:

var Transform = require('stream').Transform;

module.exports = function transfob( _transform ) {
  var transform = new Transform({
    objectMode: true
  });
  transform._transform = _transform;
  return transform;
};

I use transfob for all the Metafizzy docs sites.

through2 is a proper utility for streams, so you may need it for more heavy lifting. But for my purposes, working with Gulp, transfob is all I need. So, If you're writing Gulp plugins, consider switching out through2.obj for transfob.