Halotools is a specialized python package for building and testing models of the galaxy-halo connection, and analyzing catalogs of dark matter halos. The core functionality of the package includes:

• Fast generation of synthetic galaxy populations using HODs, abundance matching, and related methods
• Efficient algorithms for calculating galaxy clustering, lensing, z-space distortions, and other astronomical statistics
• A modular, object-oriented framework for designing your own galaxy evolution model
• End-to-end support for downloading publicly-available halo catalogs and reducing them to fast-loading hdf5 files

The code is publicly available at https://github.com/astropy/halotools.

The latest build of the documentation can be found at http://halotools.readthedocs.org. The docs includes installation instructions, quickstart guides and step-by-step tutorials.

Halotools is a fully open-source package with contributing scientists spread across many universities. The package will soon be ready for beta release. If you are willing to serve as a beta-tester, or if you just wish to use Halotools before the first official release, please contact andrew.hearin@yale.edu.

Halotools is licensed under a 3-clause BSD style license - see the licenses/LICENSE.rst file.