main engine is dc.js (which builds off of d3 and crossfilter.js). all three libraries have big learning curve, machete's goal is to make it accessible to non-devs. We're looking at targeting devs that don't want to learn yet another 3 frameworks. If you're already familiar with the three (which we are), it makes a great prototyping tool then you can re-do it to add the bajillion features that we purposefully left out of machete.
