What Good Requirements Cover

From a Cloud to a Checklist

Every website idea starts as a fuzzy cloud: “a cool personal website.”

Good requirements turn that cloud into clear items, sorted by how much they matter:

This note is your checklist. Go through it once, and almost nothing important gets left to a default.

1. Who It’s For

Everything else follows from this. A site for people who might hire you is very different from a site for your friends and family.

• Who will visit?
• What should they think or feel when they leave?
• What should they do? (Email you? Look at your work? Follow you somewhere?)

2. How It Should Feel

The mood. Three or four words are plenty:

• Playful, warm, hand-drawn.
• Calm, minimal, lots of white space.
• Bold, bright, a little bit loud.

You’ll learn to go much deeper on the look in the next two notes.

3. The Pages and What’s on Them

List every page, and the sections on each:

One-page site? Then list the sections from top to bottom instead.

4. Your Real Content

This one is easy to skip, and it makes a massive difference.

Give Claude your real words and your real photos, not placeholders.

If you don’t, Claude invents placeholder text (”Lorem ipsum…” or a made-up bio) and uses stock-looking gaps for photos. The site will look finished, but it won’t be yours, and you’ll have to redo every section later.

Put your text and photos in the project folder (remember: anything in the folder, Claude can use).

5. Must Have, Nice to Have, Not Now

Sort every feature into one of three piles:

• Must have: the site doesn’t make sense without it.
• Nice to have: lovely, if there’s time.
• Not now: a good idea, for later.

That last pile is surprisingly important. Writing “not now: an online shop” stops Claude (and you!) from getting distracted halfway through.

6. What “Done” Looks Like

Finish with one or two sentences that describe the finish line:

“Done means: every must-have works, it looks right on a laptop and a phone, and it’s live on the internet.”

Without a finish line, projects never end. They just keep growing.

Putting It Together

Here’s what a complete, small REQUIREMENTS.md can look like:

# Requirements: My Illustration Website

## Who it's for
People who might hire me as an illustrator. After visiting, they
should want to email me.

## Feel
Playful and warm, like flipping through a sketchbook.

## Pages
- Home: my name, my photo (me.jpg), one-line intro, 3 favorite drawings
- Gallery: all 12 drawings in the drawings folder, captions from captions.txt
- About: text from about-me.txt, fun facts
- Contact: email and Instagram link

## Must have
- Everything above, working on laptop and phone

## Nice to have
- Drawings gently fade in as you scroll

## Not now
- An online shop
- A blog

## Done means
Every must-have works on laptop and phone, and the site is live.

It’s short. It’s clear. And every line of it is one less thing Claude has to guess.

Look at @REQUIREMENTS.md. Which of these are missing or too vague: who it's for, the feel, the pages and sections, my real content, must/nice/not now, and what done looks like? Ask me about each missing one, one question at a time, then update the file.