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name: development-and-testing description: "Use statsmodels source-development guidance for Meson/Cython editable builds, focused pytest selection, docs and example maintenance, public API checks, docstring validation, warnings, and contributor troubleshooting." disable-model-invocation: true metadata: disco-role: operating license: BSD 3-Clause

Development and testing

Use this sub-skill only when the user is editing, reviewing, testing, documenting, packaging, or maintaining a statsmodels source checkout. For ordinary installed-package usage, route to the statistical-modeling sub-skills instead.

Workflow

1. Determine changed areas: package source, Cython extension, docs/notebooks/examples, tests, public API, warnings, or build metadata.
2. Ensure the checkout is built/installed in editable mode after source or Cython changes. Source builds require compiler, Meson, Cython, NumPy/SciPy, and package dependencies.
3. Run focused tests first, then broader tests only when risk justifies it. Do not run the entire suite by default for small edits.
4. For docs/examples, validate code snippets and generated examples without mutating release or credential-bound tooling.
5. Treat archive/ as deprecated legacy code and sandbox/ as experimental unless a task explicitly targets them.

Read or run

• Read references/maintenance.md for editable install, docs/example scripts, API checks, docstring validation, and excluded release tooling.
• Read references/testing-reference.md for focused pytest commands, markers, changed-path mapping, and CI considerations.
• Read references/troubleshooting.md for build, Cython, pytest plugin, warning, and docs failures.
• Run scripts/focused_test_plan.py with changed paths to print recommended pytest targets; it does not run tests by default.

Boundaries

• Do not bundle or run release-key, deploy, or broad CI scripts from this skill.
• Do not tell a future agent to execute original tools/ scripts as runtime user workflow; this sub-skill describes when such maintainer tools exist and how to replace them with safe commands or focused checks.
• Use the model sub-skills to understand behavior before editing model code.