Ask HN: Would a tool to check if code matches requirements be useful?

1 eladtamir 3 5/11/2025, 11:14:20 PM

Hi HN, I’m a junior web developer exploring a side project idea and would love your thoughts. The concept is a simple web app that takes a requirements doc (e.g., User Stories) and code, then checks if the code implements the requirements.For example: you upload a spec saying “add a Google login function,” upload the code, and get a report with (requirement met) or (missing). The goal is to help product managers, developers, and clients verify features without manually reading code.Questions:Would this be valuable for developers, PMs, or QA?What features would you want in such a tool?Any advice for building a minimal MVP?I’m sharing this anonymously as I’m in the early ideation phase. Honest feedback is welcome, even if it’s “this won’t work because X” Thanks!

Comments (3)

dtagames · 15h ago

You can already do this with Cursor. The problem will be that the requirements doc never really lays out the real requirements and there is no way just from examining the code to see if it will give the results a PM wants.

To try it in Cursor, just open a repo and ask, "Does this app meet the requirements specified in @my-reqs-file.md?"

byoung2 · 19h ago

This seems like it would only be useful for open source projects, like a check to see if a pull request matches a feature request or an open issue. For most companies, uploading your code and requirements docs to a random website is a non-starter.

eladtamir · 18h ago

Hey, thanks for the feedback! You’re totally right about the privacy issue with uploading code. I’m thinking a self-hosted version could work, or maybe focusing on open-source projects like you said. Love the PR idea! Any tips on how to make that useful for OSS contributors? Appreciate it!