---
title: "Requirements"
description: "What GitLane needs installed, and what each optional dependency unlocks."
---

> Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.gitlane.space/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Requirements

## Required

**Git 2.36 or newer, on your `PATH`.** GitLane shells out to your real `git`
binary for every write operation, and the write layer checks the version
before it runs anything. Older versions are refused rather than silently
misbehaving.

```sh
git --version
```

That is the whole hard requirement. A repository is fully usable — clone,
commit, branch, merge, push — with no account connected to GitLane at all.

## Optional, per feature

> **Nothing here blocks the core app**
>
> Each of these unlocks one surface. Skip them all and you still get the
> graph, staging, conflict resolution, worktrees, stashes, and tags.

| You want | You need |
| --- | --- |
| GitHub pull requests | [GitHub CLI](https://cli.github.com) `gh` **2.95+**, signed in via `gh auth login` |
| GitLab merge requests | `glab` signed in, **or** a GitLab personal access token added in Settings |
| Bitbucket pull requests | An Atlassian API token (legacy app passwords also work) added in Settings |
| AI-drafted commit messages | An AI CLI on your `PATH` — `claude`, `codex`, and similar |

### Why the `gh` version floor

Before it runs a GitHub operation, GitLane probes a non-secret capability
baseline: `gh version`, `gh auth status --json hosts`, `gh auth token`,
`gh pr diff --patch --color never`, and `gh api graphql`. Versions below 2.95
don't support all of it, so GitLane tells you to upgrade instead of failing
midway through a pull-request action.

## Forges without pull-request support

Repositories hosted on Azure DevOps, Gitea, or Forgejo/Codeberg work
completely for everything else — commit, branch, fetch, pull, push. Only the
pull-request view is unavailable, and GitLane says so plainly instead of
failing with a cryptic error from a CLI that was never going to work.

## Building from source

If you'd rather compile it yourself, see
[Build from source](/reference/build-from-source) — you'll need
[bun](https://bun.sh), the [Rust toolchain](https://rustup.rs), and your
platform's [Tauri system dependencies](https://v2.tauri.app/start/prerequisites/).

Source: https://docs.gitlane.space/getting-started/requirements/index.mdx