Pythia 8 is a general purpose Monte Carlo generator for high energy particle physics (pythia.org) written in C++. An experimental Python interface was introduced with Pythia 8.219 using `SWIG` to automatically generate the bindings. The Pythia 8.3 series switched to the `C++11` standard, and we now use `binder` (through `LLVM`) and `PyBind11` to automatically generate the bindings. An advantage of this system is that users can easily generate new bindings for bespoke code. Usage of the interface has increased significantly, and we have even used it for `Jupyter` notebooks at summer schools ([CTEQ][1], [HSF][2]).

We are in the process of deploying a user-contributed repository, `pythia8-contrib`, where users can provide external contributions to Pythia. The initial `C++` framework supporting this with runtime loaded modules will be released in Pythia 8.310. A feature of this framework is that user provided `C++` modules can be accessed via the Python interface without the need to generate new bindings (albeit only with access to the base class API).

During this workshop we would like to explore the following:

 1. Can we improve the Python interface to Pythia, without introducing a significant maintenance overhead or external dependencies?
 2. Following on this, can we provide interoperability with the HEP Python ecosystem?
 3. How do we expand the `pythia8-contrib` platform to include Python contributions?

  [1]: https://gitlab.com/Pythia8/tutorials/-/tree/master/cteq22
  [2]: https://gitlab.com/Pythia8/tutorials/-/tree/master/hsf23