Installation

Prerequisites

• Python >= 3.12

Install from PyPI

pip install neuralbench

Install from source

From the monorepo root:

pip install ./neuralbench-repo

Or from inside the sub-repo:

cd neuralbench-repo
pip install .

(Use pip install -e . instead if you intend to modify the source – see Developer install below.)

Developer install

Editable mode picks up local source changes without reinstalling, and the [dev] extra brings in pytest, ruff, mypy, pre-commit, and the type stubs that mypy neuralbench requires:

pip install -e 'neuralbench-repo/.[dev]'
pre-commit install

Optional dependencies

Extra dependency groups are available for dataset downloading and model loading:

pip install 'neuralbench-repo/.[datasets,models]'

First-run configuration

The first time you run neuralbench, you will be prompted to set three paths:

• DATA_DIR – where datasets are downloaded.

• CACHE_DIR – where preprocessed data is cached.

• SAVE_DIR – where results are saved.

The configuration is stored in ~/.neuralbench/config.json by default.

Custom config location

Set the NEURALBENCH_CONFIG environment variable to point at a different file (useful on shared machines, for CI, or when juggling multiple profiles):

export NEURALBENCH_CONFIG=/path/to/my/neuralbench-config.json
neuralbench eeg audiovisual_stimulus --debug

The variable is read every time neuralbench starts, so you can switch configs by re-exporting it.