diff --git a/setup.sh b/setup.sh
index 8791f69..c400d77 100755
--- a/setup.sh
+++ b/setup.sh
@@ -1,5 +1,8 @@
 #!/bin/bash
-# Setup environment variables
+# sets up environment variables for running the suite.
+
+# this script assumes you are running on S3DF and are using the psana environment,
+# (you have executed 'source /sdf/group/lcls/ds/ana/sw/conda2/manage/bin/psconda.sh')
 
 
 # current_dir=$(pwd)
diff --git a/setup_developers.sh b/setup_developers.sh
index 429f55d..64c9222 100755
--- a/setup_developers.sh
+++ b/setup_developers.sh
@@ -1,10 +1,11 @@
 #!/bin/bash
-# Setup environment variables
-
-# setup for running all the tests
+# this script sets things up for running the tests and linting/formatting scripts.
 # only needs to be run once in each download of this repo
 # (as opposed to setup.sh which needs to be run each new terminal session)
 
+# this script assumes you are running on S3DF and are using the psana environment,
+# (you have executed 'source /sdf/group/lcls/ds/ana/sw/conda2/manage/bin/psconda.sh')
+
 # dependencies used in tests + formatting/linting script
 # (these might already be installed into the S3DF env, if so the following cmds should simply do nothing)
 pip install pytest
@@ -14,6 +15,10 @@ pip install ruff
 # nice output formatting for pytest
 pip install pytest-sugar
 
+# init git large file storage (LFS)
+# (assumes git LFS is installed on system already)
+git lfs install
+
 # setup test_data submodule
 git submodule init
 git submodule update