Prerequisites are documented
Why it matters
Undocumented prerequisites turn a five-minute setup into an hour of debugging. When a project silently requires Node.js 18+ for native fetch, a running Postgres instance, or an active Stripe account, developers on Node 16 or without the external service hit cryptic runtime errors with no path to resolution. iso-25010:2011 analysability treats prerequisite documentation as a core input to understanding a system. The failure mode is invisible: the code looks correct, the install succeeds, and then execution fails for reasons that have nothing to do with the code itself.
Severity rationale
High because missing prerequisites cause silent environment failures that block setup entirely, and the resulting errors are rarely self-diagnosing — developers waste significant time before discovering the real dependency.
Remediation
Add a Prerequisites section immediately before Installation. Be version-specific and include external service accounts:
## Prerequisites
- Node.js >= 18
- PostgreSQL >= 14 (or a Supabase account — free tier works)
- An OpenAI API key ([get one here](https://platform.openai.com/api-keys))
- ffmpeg installed locally (`brew install ffmpeg` on macOS)
Version ranges must be explicit ('Node.js >= 18', not 'Node.js'). Every external service or API key the project requires at runtime must appear here.
DetectionPro
The detection method for this pattern is part of AuditBuffet Pro.
The full method (what to look for, pass and fail conditions, and how results get reported) ships inside the Developer Documentation Audit. The pattern definition, severity rationale, and remediation remain openly licensed under CC-BY-4.0.
External references
- iso-25010:2011 · maintainability.analysability
Taxons
History
- 2026-04-18·v1.0.0·Initial import from developer-documentation·automated