Skip to main content

elspais

"L-Space is the ultimate library, connecting all libraries everywhere through the sheer weight of accumulated knowledge." — Terry Pratchett

elspais is a requirements validation and traceability tool for teams managing formal requirements across one or more repositories. It validates requirement formats, enforces hierarchy rules, tracks changes with content hashes, and generates traceability matrices linking requirements to code and tests.

Installation

# Homebrew (macOS/Linux)
brew install anspar-org/anspar/elspais

# pipx (isolated install)
pipx install elspais

# pip
pip install elspais

Optional extras

pip install elspais[trace-view]    # Static HTML traceability view
pip install elspais[trace-review]  # Interactive viewer server
pip install elspais[mcp]           # MCP server for AI integration
pip install elspais[all]           # Everything

Quick Start

# Initialize configuration
elspais init

# Validate requirements
elspais checks

# Auto-fix hashes and formatting
elspais fix

# Generate traceability matrix
elspais trace --format html

# Interactive viewer (live server)
elspais viewer

# Built-in documentation
elspais docs

MCP Server (AI Integration)

elspais includes an MCP server for use with Claude Code, Claude Desktop, and other MCP-compatible clients.

# Install the MCP extra
pip install elspais[mcp]

# Register with Claude Code (all projects) and Claude Desktop
elspais mcp install --global --desktop

# Each shell supplies the daemon's address before launching the client
eval "$(elspais mcp env)"

The MCP server provides tools for searching requirements, navigating hierarchies, checking coverage, and drafting mutations — all operating on the live traceability graph.

Mutations use optimistic concurrency: several writers (agents and the viewer GUI) can share one daemon, so every mutation requires a version token from a prior read and stale writes are rejected rather than silently overwriting. See elspais docs concurrency for the protocol.

Requirement Format

Requirements are written in Markdown:

# REQ-d00001: Requirement Title

**Level**: Dev | **Status**: Active | **Implements**: REQ-p00001

## Assertions

A. The system SHALL provide user authentication via email/password.
B. Sessions SHALL expire after 30 minutes of inactivity.

*End* *Requirement Title* | **Hash**: a1b2c3d4
---
  • Hierarchy: PRD (product) → OPS (operations) → DEV (development)
  • Traceability: Children reference parents via Implements:
  • Assertions: Labeled A-Z, using SHALL for normative statements
  • Hash footer: SHA-256 content hash for change detection

Configuration

Create .elspais.toml in your repository root (or run elspais init):

[project]
name = "my-project"
namespace = "REQ"

[levels.prd]
rank = 1
letter = "p"
implements = ["prd"]

[levels.ops]
rank = 2
letter = "o"
implements = ["ops", "prd"]

[levels.dev]
rank = 3
letter = "d"
implements = ["dev", "ops", "prd"]

[scanning.spec]
directories = ["spec"]

[scanning.code]
directories = ["src"]

[id-patterns]
canonical = "{namespace}-{level.letter}{component}"

[rules.format]
require_hash = true
require_assertions = true

See docs/configuration.md for full reference.

Multi-Repository Support

Link associated repositories that extend a core requirement set:

elspais init --type associated --associated-prefix CAL
elspais associate ../core-repo
elspais checks

CLI Commands

elspais checks         Verify requirements traceability and configuration
elspais fix            Auto-fix spec file issues (hashes, formatting)
elspais trace          Generate traceability matrix (markdown, html, csv)
elspais viewer         Start interactive viewer server
elspais doctor         Diagnose environment and installation health
elspais analysis       Analyze foundational requirement importance
elspais changed        Detect git changes to spec files
elspais edit           Edit requirements in-place
elspais config         View and modify configuration
elspais associate      Manage associate repository links
elspais link suggest   Suggest requirement links for unlinked tests
elspais pdf            Compile spec files into PDF
elspais mcp            MCP server commands
elspais docs           Built-in user guide
elspais example        Requirement format examples

Run elspais <command> --help for detailed usage. See src/elspais/docs/cli/commands.md for full documentation.

Development

git clone https://github.com/anspar/elspais.git
cd elspais
pip install -e ".[dev]"
pytest

License

GNU Affero General Public License v3 (AGPL-3.0) — see LICENSE.

Links

Download files

Download the file for your platform. If you're not sure which to choose, learn more about installing packages.

Source Distribution

elspais-0.122.0.tar.gz (2.4 MB view details)

Uploaded Source

Built Distribution

If you're not sure about the file name format, learn more about wheel file names.

elspais-0.122.0-py3-none-any.whl (1.1 MB view details)

Uploaded Python 3

File details

Details for the file elspais-0.122.0.tar.gz.

File metadata

  • Download URL: elspais-0.122.0.tar.gz
  • Upload date:
  • Size: 2.4 MB
  • Tags: Source
  • Uploaded using Trusted Publishing? No
  • Uploaded via: twine/7.0.0 CPython/3.12.14

File hashes

Hashes for elspais-0.122.0.tar.gz
Algorithm Hash digest
SHA256 65e3eeaea479b906b86929e366daeda77469b05a94ce6182560a93b89622f05f
MD5 151dda74b951f0e35d0211980fd88e3f
BLAKE2b-256 b00226b0ffad53408b2103072af8901371906aeb1c022edf595915277a2680e8

See more details on using hashes here.

File details

Details for the file elspais-0.122.0-py3-none-any.whl.

File metadata

  • Download URL: elspais-0.122.0-py3-none-any.whl
  • Upload date:
  • Size: 1.1 MB
  • Tags: Python 3
  • Uploaded using Trusted Publishing? No
  • Uploaded via: twine/7.0.0 CPython/3.12.14

File hashes

Hashes for elspais-0.122.0-py3-none-any.whl
Algorithm Hash digest
SHA256 ab85a9b64fd2e4f3fe90e35f40be3dcf09de3fb3c3135a0ffd8a0388087df5d9
MD5 7fc3d5e31f783f66a3342ec3b3d1c816
BLAKE2b-256 1eedbf0eac715a2c72327d4daf3b4f17e8de5749f6e8ffe1d788f54fbc12d564

See more details on using hashes here.

Release history Release notifications | RSS feed

This release

0.122.0 This release

2 files

0.121.233

2 files

0.121.218

2 files

0.121.59

2 files

0.121.52

2 files

0.121.51

2 files

0.121.44

2 files

0.121.16

2 files

0.121.5

2 files

0.121.4

2 files

0.121.0

2 files

0.120.0

2 files

0.119.90

2 files

0.118.42

2 files

0.118.31

2 files

0.118.16

2 files

0.117.81

2 files

0.117.44

2 files

0.117.41

2 files

0.117.36

2 files

0.117.32

2 files

0.117.31

2 files

0.117.21

2 files

0.117.2

2 files

0.116.55

2 files

0.116.54

2 files

0.116.53

2 files

0.116.51

2 files

0.116.21

2 files

0.115.21

2 files

0.115.17

2 files

0.115.9

2 files

0.115.5

2 files

0.115.4

2 files

0.114.49

2 files

0.114.41

2 files

0.114.39

2 files

0.114.33

2 files

0.114.30

2 files

0.114.29

2 files

0.112.14

2 files

0.112.13

2 files

0.112.11

2 files

0.112.9

2 files

0.112.3

2 files

0.104.44

2 files

0.104.43

2 files

0.103.0

2 files

0.102.0

2 files

0.84.2

2 files

0.84.1

2 files

0.84.0

2 files

0.82.1

2 files

0.82.0

2 files

0.81.0

2 files

0.80.0

2 files

0.79.0

2 files

0.76.1

2 files

0.76.0

2 files

0.75.0

2 files

0.74.0

2 files

0.73.2

2 files

0.73.1

2 files

0.73.0

2 files

0.72.0

2 files

0.66.0

2 files

0.65.0

2 files

0.64.1

2 files

0.64.0

2 files

0.63.3

2 files

0.59.0

2 files

0.58.0

2 files

0.57.0

2 files

0.56.1

2 files

0.54.1

2 files

0.54.0

2 files

0.52.0

2 files

0.51.0

2 files

0.43.5

2 files

0.11.2

2 files

0.11.1

2 files

0.11.0

2 files

0.9.3

2 files

0.9.1

2 files

Anthropic, PBC Visionary sponsor Bloomberg Visionary sponsor Hudson River Trading Visionary sponsor Meta Visionary sponsor NVIDIA Visionary sponsor Microsoft Sustainability sponsor Depot Continuous Integration AWS Cloud computing and Security Sponsor Datadog Monitoring Fastly CDN Google Download Analytics Sentry Error logging StatusPage Status page