- extract shared helpers for dataset writers, scheduler construction, thread interleaving, hf roundtrips, and moe configs
- remove about 20 cases whose only assertions were format checks, restated declarations, fake-taxonomy duplicates, or test-local scaffolding
- strengthen weak cases into exact reference comparisons, positional mask checks, and deterministic outcomes
- replace two schedule factory smoke tests with cosine/sgdr formula assertions
- delete root-level CLI tests whose merge-priority facts are covered by tests/config/test_cli.py
- suite shrinks from 857 to 826 items; ruff format, import order, and pytest all green