Introduce new utils repo

[alimaredia]

No description provided.

[nathan-weinberg]

Thanks for writing this up Ali - I've noticed there's no proposed alternatives seen in other dev-docs - curious why we would not simply add such scripts somewhere such as here or here?

I'm also a little concerned that if we make a scripts repo then folks will focus moreso on hacking scripts together than making actual functional improvements to ilab - it seems like some of the pain points you mentioned could be addressed as actual code changes. Could you speak a little more to this?

[derekhiggins]

How about increasing the scope to be more general purpose (maybe named "support-utils" or "support-scripts"?)

There would be a low barrier to entry, allowing anyone to contribute without worrying about API compatibility or long-term commitments,

The structure could include a subdirectory for "data-generation" but also
"debug-utilities", "ci-utilities", "dev-env-setup" etc...

As people use the scripts and improve them, it will become clear which ones are essential (the cream will float to the top), at which point it could graduate to one of the main repositories

[alimaredia]

@derekhiggins I've changed the proposal to have the repo name to support-utils. I think some of the ideas for the structure you mentioned are great, and I hope the repo evolves that way as scripts are added.

[courtneypacheco]

This idea makes sense to me.

[courtneypacheco]

We have 4 approvals, 1 of which is an oversight committee approval. Going to merge this.