In Python 3, the default encoding of source files is utf-8. The encoding cookie is now unnecessary and redundant so remove it. For more details, see the docs: https://docs.python.org/3/howto/unicode.html#the-string-type > The default encoding for Python source code is UTF-8, so you can > simply include a Unicode character in a string literal ... Includes a fix for the flake8 header checks to stop expecting an encoding cookie.