This release of simtools, the simulation toolkit for the CTA Observatory, includes the following main changes: API Changes Changed simtools-simulate-prod grid-registration output handling. The command-line option was renamed from --pack_for_grid_register to --grid_output_path. When --grid_output_path is configured, simulation products are now written as plain files into that directory instead of creating a registration tarball. This includes copied sim_telarray logs, CORSIKA logs, histogram (.hdata) files, existing model archives, moved event output files, and a gzipped simtools.log.gz. (#2320) Bugfixes Allow integration tests to run from working directories containing a pytest configuration (see simpipe issue #34). (#2312) Fixes simtools-simulate-prod job-grid precedence by rejecting ambiguous mixes of --job_grid_file/--job_grid_row with explicit production parameters. Job-grid row resolution now happens inside simulate_prod before settings are loaded; the generic post-load override path was removed. Added parser/source tracking so CLI/YAML conflicts fail clearly while argparse defaults remain valid. Updated tests, docs, and the integration config to cover direct single-row job-grid execution. (#2328) Resolve reading of ecsv-style tables for simtools-validate-cumulative-psf. (#2342) Fixed schema validation so dimensionless integer columns in generated job grids stay integer-typed instead of being written to ECSV as floats. (#2343) Documentation Improve documentation on Apptainer ORAS image tags (suffix -apptainer). (#2317) Add dedicated documentation pages on unit, integration and science tests plus a description on how to generate test resources. (#2338) New Features Add application to generate and validate integration test resources: simtools-resources-test-generate. Used for simtools-tests test generation. (#2279) Allow to run integration and unit tests with resources from a configurable path (--test_resources_path). Example: pytest -n auto --no-cov --model_version=7.0.0 \\ --test-resources-path=../simtools-tests/simtools-tests/v0.33.0/integration_tests \\ tests/integration_tests ``` ([#2283](https://github.com/gammasim/simtools/pull/2283)) Add generic runtime environment file option to simtools-run-application and simtools-resources-test-generate. Use --runtime_environment_file pointing to e.g. runtime_environment: container_engine: podman image: ghcr.io/gammasim/simtools-prod:20260622-v78010-v2025-11-30-rc-generic network: simtools-mongo-network environment_file: .env options: - "--arch amd64" - "-v /<whatever path>/simpipe:/workdir/external/simpipe:ro" (#2284) Add support for running simtools-simulate-prod with parameters sourced directly from a production job grid ECSV file. Allows to use --job_grid_file / --job_grid_row to select a specific row from a job grid file to run a simulation with the parameters defined in that row. (#2291) Added backend-neutral parameter-scan grids for NSB and proton bias-curve simulations, with optional scan fields supported by the HTCondor submission generator. (#2298) Change simulation production grid from RA/Dec based to HA/Dec based. Simplify production grid table with less columns and more descriptive column names. Update sim_telarray metadata to include array Az/Ze and HA/Dec information. (#2313) Improve simtools-plot-corsika-limits: correctly handle viewcone limits for cases of point-like simulations improve plotting by adding projections of distance and energy axes to 2D distribution panels set consistent limits to the axes when plotting: always use the broad-range simulation limits (#2319) Add functionality to simtools-resources-test-generate to run a single test generation config file using the --config_file option. Example: simtools-resources-test-generate --test_directory . --simtools_version v0.34.0 --overwrite_collection_files \ --config_file simtools-tests/v0.34.0/integration_tests/config_files/generate_array_config_alpha_north_5.0.0.config.yml ``` ([#2321](https://github.com/gammasim/simtools/pull/2321)) Enable --runtime_environment_file setting of run time environment (e.g., a container environment) with correct path settings for test resource generation and generic application running. (#2323) Introduce schema-validation for sim_telarray metaparameters. To export the full metadata description including all model parameters, use application simtools-export-sim-telarray-metadata-schema. (#2324) Add schema URL to metadata of job grid table. Add functionality to simtools-validate-file-using-schema to read this schema from the header file. (#2327) Generalize the creation and use of trigger-event histograms with several major improvements: Add a generic application, simtools-write-trigger-histograms, to build and write trigger-event histograms from reduced event-data files. The following applications were updated to use these generic histograms: simtools-compare-productions simtools-production-derive-corsika-limits simtools-plot-simulated-event-distributions simtools-production-derive-monte-carlo-statistics Improve the estimation of required Monte Carlo statistics in simtools-production-derive-monte-carlo-statistics by using the generic histograms and by providing a more robust estimate of the relative statistical uncertainty. Improve file-type related utilities: add a utility application, simtools-inspect-file, to print the main structure and metadata of a simtools-generated file. add the new modules simtools.io.file_type and simtools.io.file_inspector with helper functions to identify and inspect files. (#2329) Calculate mean, max, and stdev of shower-reuse as function of energy, core, and angular distance: filled and saved with simtools-write-trigger-histograms plotted with simtools-plot-simtel-events (#2331) Maintenance Improve robustness when writing reduced event-data HDF5 files with simtools-write-reduced-event-lists. (#2296) Increase performance and efficiency of simtools-write-reduced-event-lists. (#2310) Add flake8-cognitive-complexity to pre-commit stage. (#2311) Improve efficiency and memory footprint for reading of reduced event data and histogram filling for simtools-production-derive-corsika-limits. (#2316) Simplify naming of sim_telarray configuration files written to disk for simulation production: telescope configuration files are now of type CTAO-LSTS-01.cfg, CTAO-SSTS-25.cfg array configuration files are of type CTAO-South-beta.cfg raises an exception if existing configuration files are overwritten by an application. add a run-number level to the model sub directory to avoid overwriting for applications using several models. (#2318) Review and improve pylint options with less disabled messages. (#2330) Major refactor of application documentation generation: read command line parameters from their definition in the configuration module (instead of repeating the help messages in the docstring) allow to read the integration test configuration file and use them as use-case examples in the application documentation (#2333) Improve guidance for coding agents and generalize (so they can now be used with Copilot, Claude, and Codex): add a generic AGENTS.md (replaces .github/copilot-instructions.md) move skills to .agents/skills and add a documentation skill. (#2337) Change trigger for simtools-prod and simtools-dev container generation. Don't push when running on main. Push for tags of type vXX.YY.ZZ-rc (release candidates). (#2339) Update of tests/resources with re-generated files. General update to model version v7.0.0. (#2340)