IDM Standards

IDM’s central hub for software quality standards, development practices, and tooling. This content is available as a repo and as published docs.

Getting started

New to IDM? Start with the getting started guides:

Python setup – setting up your development environment
AI tools – getting started with Claude Code and plugins
Communication – GitHub, Teams, meetings, and team culture

Engineering guidance

The engineering guidance covers IDM’s conventions for writing research software:

Philosophy – design principles and priorities
Python – Python style conventions (Google style + IDM house rules)
R – R style and engineering practice (Tidyverse style + IDM expectations)
Tests – testing practices for scientific code
Documentation – standards for READMEs, docstrings, and tutorials
Other – miscellaneous principles (for example, data security)
Zen – short principles and credos
Engineering quality guidelines – principles for writing good code

Documentation guidance

The docs guidance covers IDM’s approach to documentation:

Style and grammar – style and grammar checking
MkDocs overview – how to build docs with MkDocs
Quarto overview – how to build docs with Quarto
Home page – how to write a good home (landing) page
Installation page – how to write a good installation page
Topic types – how to structure your content as tutorials, explanations, how-to guides, etc.
Personas – how to write for different audiences
Templates – MkDocs and Quarto templates

Claude Code plugin

This repo includes the IDM-Standards plugin (v2.0) for automating quality checks against the engineering quality guidelines and IDM documentation standards. Its skills:

/idm-standards:audit-code – score a project and write code_audit.md (routes to audit-r-code for R projects); /idm-standards:fix-code applies the recommendations.
/idm-standards:audit-docs – full documentation audit (docs_audit.md), composing audit-docs-structure, audit-personas, and audit-docstrings.
/idm-standards:audit-project – run code and/or docs audits with one set of questions; /idm-standards:fix-project applies fixes across both.
/idm-standards:audit-code-exhaustive – fan-out per-file review aggregated into code_audit_exhaustive.md.

Migrating from v1.x? The former idm-eng-plugin, idm-docs-plugin, and idm-uplifter-plugin are now this single plugin, and the skills were renamed (for example, eng-quality-checker → audit-code). Uninstall the old three and install idm-standards.

Install via the Claude Code marketplace (configured in .claude-plugin/marketplace.json). Set "autoUpdates": true in your claude.json configuration file.

Installation with Claude Code

To install, add this repo as a marketplace inside Claude Code using either of the methods below (it will be available in both places regardless of installation method). If you see a permissions error, you may need to enable Admin by Request.

CLI

Run /plugin marketplace add https://github.com/InstituteforDiseaseModeling/idm_standards.
Run /plugin, from the Discover tab, install any of the plugins.

VSCode extension

In the Claude Code chat window, type /plugin in the Claude Code chat and select Manage plugins > Marketplaces.
Enter https://github.com/InstituteforDiseaseModeling/idm_standards and click Add.
In Plugins select the plugins you want and click Install.

Installation with other LLMs

Although these plugins were built for Claude Code, they will work with any LLM via OpenSkills.