DOC: Refresh contributor-facing metadata

[deepakganesh78]

Summary

• make the README and rendered setup guide pip-first while retaining the conda-forge path
• add the current software version and release date to CITATION.cff, preserving the JOSS article publication date
• replace brittle test counts and timings with durable guidance
• add a release checklist so citation metadata stays current

Validation

• cffconvert --validate
• flake8 --select=F401,F405,E231 quantecon
• pytest quantecon (600 passed, 2 existing warnings)
• Sphinx HTML documentation build

Closes #900

[quantecon-services]

Hi @deepakganesh78 👋 Thanks for picking up #900 — this is a clean, well-scoped PR and it addresses all three acceptance criteria in the issue. The README/setup.rst changes read well and are consistent with each other, the "600+ tests, several minutes" phrasing won't rot, and the CITATION.cff update is correct (details in the inline comment). I'd like to merge it.

What's blocking: main has moved since you opened this and the PR currently can't be merged. I trial-merged locally and there are two conflicts:

• .github/copilot-instructions.md was deleted on main by #941 (replaced by AGENTS.md, which already has durable wording) — please drop this file from the PR.
• docs/source/contributing.rst — #941 added a "Multi-phase projects and releases" section at the same spot as your new "Prepare a release" heading. Keep both and fold your checklist into that section.

CI also hasn't run on this PR yet, so a rebase will let us see the Sphinx build go green.

Suggestions (non-blocking, inline):

• Make the citation checklist self-enforcing with a small version-equality check in the tag-triggered publish job — fine as a follow-up.
• cffconvert isn't in environment.yml; either add an install hint or move validation to CI.
• Optional: with pip-first messaging, the setup.rst note about the "main anaconda channel" is now the only Anaconda reference left and could be trimmed to just point at conda-forge.

One friendly request. QuantEcon is currently drafting an AI disclosure policy for contributions (see QuantEcon/qeps#13). It isn't in force yet, but it would help us as we shape the policy if you could add a short note to the PR description saying whether AI tools were used in preparing this PR and, if so, which tools or models (e.g. "drafted with Claude Code / Copilot / ChatGPT, then reviewed and tested by hand"). "No AI tools used" is an equally welcome answer. The goal is transparency rather than gatekeeping — AI-assisted contributions are fine, we'd just like the provenance recorded.

Thanks again! 😊

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[quantecon-services]

This file no longer exists on main — #941 deleted it and replaced it with AGENTS.md, which already uses durable wording ("The full suite takes minutes") and carries no test count. That makes this part of the PR obsolete and it is one of the two merge conflicts GitHub is reporting (modify/delete).

Please drop this file from the PR when you rebase; nothing from it needs to be carried over to AGENTS.md.

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[quantecon-services]

This is the second merge conflict: #941 added a "Multi-phase projects and releases" section at exactly this spot on main. Both should be kept.

Suggest folding this checklist into (or placing it directly after) that section, and reconciling the wording with its existing line "treat the milestone as the release checklist" — e.g. "Before tagging, also: ..." so the two don't read as competing release procedures.

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[quantecon-services]

cffconvert isn't in environment.yml or any requirements file, so this step asks the release manager to run a tool they won't have. Either add it to environment.yml, or say pip install cffconvert inline.

One caveat if you add it as a dependency: cffconvert 2.0.0 pins jsonschema<4, which fights with the modern stack (I hit this installing it locally to validate this PR). A lighter alternative is to run validation in CI via citation-file-format/cffconvert-github-action rather than making it a local dev dependency.

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[quantecon-services]

Verified: this validates with cffconvert --validate (schema 1.2.0), 0.11.4 matches quantecon.__version__ on main, and 2026-07-15 matches the v0.11.4 GitHub release date. The rendered citation now reads "(2026) … (version 0.11.4)" instead of the frozen 2024 snapshot — nice.

One suggestion so this stays true: #900 floated "or wire the release workflow to do it". A few-line step in the tag-triggered publish job in ci.yml that fails if version: here doesn't equal quantecon.__version__ (or the v* tag) would make the checklist self-enforcing rather than relying on memory. Happy for that to be a follow-up if you'd rather keep this PR docs-only.

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