English

StatsClaw: An AI-Collaborative Workflow for Statistical Software Development

Software Engineering 2026-04-07 v1

Abstract

Translating statistical methods into reliable software is a persistent bottleneck in quantitative research. Existing AI code-generation tools produce code quickly but cannot guarantee faithful implementation -- a critical requirement for statistical software. We introduce StatsClaw, a multi-agent architecture for Claude Code that enforces information barriers between code generation and validation. A planning agent produces independent specifications for implementation, simulation, and testing, dispatching them to separate agents that cannot see each other's instructions: the builder implements without knowing the ground-truth parameters, the simulator generates data without knowing the algorithm, and the tester validates using deterministic criteria. We describe the approach, demonstrate it end-to-end on a probit estimation package, and evaluate it across three applications to the authors' own R and Python packages. The results show that structured AI-assisted workflows can absorb the engineering overhead of the software lifecycle while preserving researcher control over every substantive methodological decision.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2604.04871,
  title  = {StatsClaw: An AI-Collaborative Workflow for Statistical Software Development},
  author = {Tianzhu Qin and Yiqing Xu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2604.04871},
  year   = {2026}
}
R2 v1 2026-07-01T11:55:35.827Z