Contributing

ausecon-mcp-server is intentionally narrow: ABS and RBA only, stdio transport only, and a small curated semantic layer over source-native retrievals.

Local setup

Use Python 3.12 for local development:

env UV_CACHE_DIR=.uv-cache uv sync --python 3.12 --extra dev

Standard verification

Run the normal local checks before opening a pull request or cutting a tag:

env UV_CACHE_DIR=.uv-cache uv run ruff check src tests scripts
env UV_CACHE_DIR=.uv-cache uv run pytest
env UV_CACHE_DIR=.uv-cache uv run pytest integration_tests/ -v
env UV_CACHE_DIR=.uv-cache uv run python scripts/audit_catalogue.py

Real client smoke

Before a release tag, run the checked-in stdio smoke path:

env UV_CACHE_DIR=.uv-cache uv run python scripts/mcp_client_smoke.py

The smoke path uses a real FastMCP stdio client transport and verifies:

• search_datasets
• list_economic_concepts
• list_catalogue
• get_abs_data
• get_economic_series

Release discipline

• Keep the MCP tool surface stable unless there is a strong reason to break it.
• Do not expose placeholder variants in the runtime catalogue.
• Prefer audited upstream fixes over broad catalogue growth.
• If an ABS or RBA replacement series is not cleanly source-native, defer it rather than shipping an approximate semantic shortcut.