Step 0 — Installation

Install reqmd in 30 seconds from a prebuilt binary or a source build, then verify the install against the bundled 274-requirement spec.

Two ways to get reqmd on your machine. Pick one.

Option 1 — Prebuilt binary (easiest)#

Download a release from GitHub Releases. Extract the archive and put reqmd on your $PATH.

Option 2 — Build from source#

Requires Go 1.26 or newer.

git clone https://github.com/dVoo/reqmd
cd reqmd
go build -o reqmd ./cmd/reqmd
./reqmd --help

Works on every platform Go supports — Linux, macOS, Windows, *BSD.

To install into $(go env GOPATH)/bin instead of building in place:

go install ./cmd/reqmd
# or, from a tagged release:
go install github.com/dVoo/reqmd/cmd/reqmd@latest

Prerequisites#

  • Go 1.26 or newer — required for the source build.
  • Cgo toolchain (gcc or clang) — only if you build the optional export graph subcommand with the ladybug build tag.

With graph export (optional)#

reqmd export graph writes a LadybugDB database for Cypher queries. It pulls in Cgo and an extra dependency, so it’s gated behind a build tag:

go build -tags ladybug -o reqmd ./cmd/reqmd

Without the tag, reqmd export graph prints an error and does nothing. The rest of the CLI works exactly the same.

Verify the install#

reqmd check spec/       # validate the bundled dogfooded spec (274 requirements)

The last line should read:

Summary: 274 total, 274 valid, 0 invalid, 0 parse errors, 23 warnings

The warnings are expected — they come from the external ASPICE base practices in spec/00-aspice/, which have no upstream traces.

What’s next#

Now write your first requirement — go to Step 1.