diff --git a/tools/summarizer/README.md b/tools/summarizer/README.md
index f75f057..05dc32f 100644
--- a/tools/summarizer/README.md
+++ b/tools/summarizer/README.md
@@ -30,9 +30,29 @@ pip install -r requirements.txt
 python -m uvicorn app:app --host 127.0.0.1 --port 8001 --workers 1
 ```
 
+If the host is missing `python3-venv` or `pip`, use the bootstrap script instead:
+
+```bash
+./scripts/bootstrap-and-test.sh bootstrap
+```
+
 ## Docker
 The Dockerfile installs Tesseract OCR so scanned PDFs and supported images can be processed inside the container.
 
+## Tests
+
+Run the summarizer unit tests with:
+
+```bash
+./scripts/bootstrap-and-test.sh test
+```
+
+The script:
+- creates `.venv` with stdlib `venv` when available
+- falls back to user-space `virtualenv` when host `venv` support is missing
+- installs `requirements-dev.txt`
+- writes pytest cache under `tmp/pytest-cache` to avoid stale root-owned `.pytest_cache` directories
+
 ## API
 - `GET /health` — health check and runtime capabilities, including Ollama version/model metadata when configured
 - `POST /summarize` — JSON body `{ "text": "...", "max_length": 150, "min_length": 30 }`
diff --git a/tools/summarizer/pytest.ini b/tools/summarizer/pytest.ini
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8a69410
--- /dev/null
+++ b/tools/summarizer/pytest.ini
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+[pytest]
+cache_dir = tmp/pytest-cache
diff --git a/tools/summarizer/scripts/bootstrap-and-test.sh b/tools/summarizer/scripts/bootstrap-and-test.sh
new file mode 100755
index 0000000..0aced9c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/tools/summarizer/scripts/bootstrap-and-test.sh
@@ -0,0 +1,62 @@
+#!/usr/bin/env bash
+set -euo pipefail
+
+ROOT_DIR="$(cd "$(dirname "${BASH_SOURCE[0]}")/.." && pwd)"
+VENV_DIR="$ROOT_DIR/.venv"
+PYTHON_BIN="${PYTHON_BIN:-python3}"
+VIRTUALENV_BIN="${VIRTUALENV_BIN:-$HOME/.local/bin/virtualenv}"
+
+ensure_user_pip() {
+  if "$PYTHON_BIN" -m pip --version >/dev/null 2>&1; then
+    return 0
+  fi
+
+  mkdir -p /tmp/jobtracker-python-bootstrap
+  cd /tmp/jobtracker-python-bootstrap
+  if [[ ! -f get-pip.py ]]; then
+    curl -fsSLo get-pip.py https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py
+  fi
+  "$PYTHON_BIN" get-pip.py --user --break-system-packages
+}
+
+ensure_venv() {
+  if [[ -x "$VENV_DIR/bin/python" && -x "$VENV_DIR/bin/pip" ]]; then
+    return 0
+  fi
+
+  if "$PYTHON_BIN" -m venv "$VENV_DIR" >/dev/null 2>&1; then
+    return 0
+  fi
+
+  ensure_user_pip
+  if [[ ! -x "$VIRTUALENV_BIN" ]]; then
+    "$PYTHON_BIN" -m pip install --user --break-system-packages virtualenv
+  fi
+  "$VIRTUALENV_BIN" "$VENV_DIR"
+}
+
+install_requirements() {
+  "$VENV_DIR/bin/pip" install -r "$ROOT_DIR/requirements-dev.txt"
+}
+
+run_tests() {
+  mkdir -p "$ROOT_DIR/tmp/pytest-cache"
+  cd "$ROOT_DIR"
+  AI_SERVICE_SKIP_MODEL_LOAD=1 "$VENV_DIR/bin/python" -m pytest -q -o cache_dir=tmp/pytest-cache tests/test_app.py
+}
+
+case "${1:-test}" in
+  bootstrap)
+    ensure_venv
+    install_requirements
+    ;;
+  test)
+    ensure_venv
+    install_requirements
+    run_tests
+    ;;
+  *)
+    echo "Usage: $0 [bootstrap|test]" >&2
+    exit 2
+    ;;
+esac