Idea: projects declare their environment needs (like requirements.txt) so fleet can check and set up members before a sprint

[apra-fleet-git[bot]]

Idea

Let a project declare what its development environment needs -- in the same spirit as requirements.txt or package.json -- so fleet can check, and optionally prepare, a member before a sprint starts.

For example, a project could state "needs .NET 8 SDK, msbuild, vstest.console" or "needs Node 22 + Python 3.12 + make".

Why

A fleet member is a folder you already use for day-to-day development, so fleet-sprint assumes its environment works -- it cannot guess which tools a given project needs. When that assumption does not hold (a new member, a fresh machine, a missing SDK), a sprint only finds out mid-run: the doer reports BLOCKED, and tokens are spent before anyone sees the real problem.

A declared list of needs would let fleet:

• check each member against the project's needs at launch and stop before any work starts if something is missing, naming exactly what;
• offer a "set up dev environment" step (a dedicated role) that works through the declared needs on a member, with the user in the loop for anything that needs elevation or approval;
• in a fleet with several members, prefer a member that already has what a task needs.

Open questions

• Format and location: a file in the repo, or part of project settings?
• How to express a need: tool + version, or a check command, or both?
• What the setup role may do unattended versus what always needs the user (installers, admin rights, licences).
• How this relates to existing deploy.md / integration-test playbooks.

Today's workaround

• Before the first sprint on a member, ask Claude interactively to deploy the project there (deployer role) or run the integration tests (integration-test runner role). It exercises the real toolchain and either fixes the environment or says what to install.
• Or add an "environment" bead (e.g. "make sure .NET 8 SDK is installed, otherwise install it") that the other beads depend on.

Feedback and examples of what your projects would need to declare are very welcome.