System Requirements

Rapid OS is designed to keep its technical overhead low: the governance core has no mandatory third-party runtime dependencies and runs on the Python standard library.

Required prerequisites

To run the Rapid OS CLI on any operating system, you need:

Requirement	Minimum version	Notes
Python	3.10 or later	Extensively tested in CI with Python 3.10, 3.11, 3.12, and 3.13.
Git	2.20 or later	Used for version control operations and repository inspection.
Terminal	Standard console	PowerShell 5.1+ or 7+ on Windows; Bash or Zsh on Linux/macOS.

Check the prerequisites

Before installing, check your tools in a terminal:

python --version   # or python3 --version
git --version

Both commands should return successfully with compatible versions.

Optional dependencies

Not required for the main CLI

The v3 governance loop (scan, spec, context, policy, run, harness, evidence, eval, validate) does not require Node.js or npm.

Additional tools are needed only in these two cases:

1. Remote skill management (rapid skill add): If you use the legacy feature for adding third-party skills through npx, node (Node.js 18+) and npx must be available on your PATH.
2. Documentation site development and build (Docusaurus): To clone and build the documentation site locally from website/, you need Node.js 20+ and npm.

Connectivity and permissions

• Internet access: Needed only to initially download the repository or package. The rest of the governance loop runs fully offline, without calling cloud APIs.
• User permissions: Administrator (root or Administrator) privileges are not required to install or use Rapid OS. It installs in the user directory ($HOME/.rapid-os).