Enforce Linting, Type-Checking, and Code Style

[aniebietafia]

Problem

The project currently uses black and isort for formatting, but lacks a comprehensive linter and consistent type-checking. This can lead to subtle bugs, inconsistent coding patterns, and poor maintainability as the codebase grows. There is no automated enforcement of these standards outside of the newly planned CI workflow.

Proposed Solution

Standardize the project's code style by adopting a modern linter (e.g., ruff) and fully configuring mypy for static type analysis. Update pyproject.toml to serve as the single source of truth for all linting and formatting configurations.

User Stories

• As a developer, I want clear feedback on code quality and style violations as I write code.
• As a reviewer, I want to spend less time on stylistic comments and more time on logic and architecture.

Acceptance Criteria

• ruff is added as a development dependency and configured in pyproject.toml.
• mypy is added as a development dependency and configured in pyproject.toml.
• Existing code is updated to pass all linting and type-checking rules.
• A make lint or similar command is available for local verification.
• Documentation is updated to include the coding standards and how to run the tools.

Proposed Technical Details

• Use ruff to replace multiple tools (flake8, autoflake, etc.) for performance and simplicity.
• Configure ruff rules to be strict but pragmatic (e.g., following the B, E, F, and I rule sets).
• Set up mypy with strict = true or a similar high-standard configuration to ensure type safety.
• Update pyproject.toml sections for [tool.ruff] and [tool.mypy].

Tasks

• Add ruff and mypy to requirements.txt (or a new requirements-dev.txt).
• Configure ruff in pyproject.toml.
• Configure mypy in pyproject.toml.
• Run ruff check . --fix to address auto-fixable issues.
• Manually fix remaining linting violations.
• Fix type-checking errors reported by mypy.
• Update README.md with instructions for running linting tools.