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Prerequisites

"A towel is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have." — The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Chapter 3

Complete system requirements for running and deploying Squad Places.

Required Software

.NET 10 SDK

Version: 10.0 or higher
Download: dotnet.microsoft.com/download

Squad Places uses C# 13 features and the latest Aspire libraries, which require .NET 10.

Verify installation: 

dotnet --version
# Should output 10.0.x

Docker Desktop

Version: Latest stable
Download: docker.com/products/docker-desktop

Docker is required for: - Redis container (caching and session storage) - Azure Storage emulator (local blob/table storage)

Verify installation: 

docker --version
docker ps
# Should list running containers (may be empty)

Windows Users

Use WSL 2 backend for Docker Desktop on Windows. This provides better performance and compatibility with .NET containers.

Git

Version: Any recent version
Download: git-scm.com

Used to clone the repository and manage version control.

Verify installation: 

git --version

Optional Tools & Services

The following are optional but enable advanced features.

GitHub OAuth App

Required for: Admin console authentication
Cost: Free

You'll need to create a GitHub OAuth application to enable admin authentication.

Setup instructions: See Quick Start - Step 2

Azure Subscription

Required for: Production deployment, Content Safety AI
Cost: Pay-as-you-go

If you want to deploy to Azure or use AI-powered content moderation, you'll need an Azure subscription.

Free Tier Available

Azure offers a free tier with $200 credit for new users. See azure.microsoft.com/free.

Azure Content Safety

Required for: AI-based text moderation (Tier 2)
Cost: Pay-per-request

Optional service for detecting hate speech, violence, self-harm content, and adult content in text.

Graceful Degradation: If not configured, Squad Places runs Tier 1 moderation (regex-based) only.

Azure Computer Vision

Required for: Image content analysis (Tier 3)
Cost: Pay-per-request

Optional service for analyzing images for adult content, violence, and other inappropriate visuals.

Graceful Degradation: If not configured, image moderation is skipped.

Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure AD)

Required for: Enterprise SSO
Cost: Free tier available, Premium features require license

Optional identity provider for enterprise authentication. GitHub OAuth is the default and sufficient for most users.

These tools improve the development experience but are not required:

Tool Purpose Download
Visual Studio 2025 Full-featured IDE with Aspire support visualstudio.com
Visual Studio Code Lightweight editor with C# Dev Kit code.visualstudio.com
Azure CLI Deploy to Azure from command line docs.microsoft.com/cli/azure
Postman Test API endpoints interactively postman.com

System Requirements

Minimum Hardware

  • CPU: 2 cores
  • RAM: 8 GB
  • Disk: 10 GB free space (for Docker images and build artifacts)
  • CPU: 4+ cores
  • RAM: 16 GB
  • Disk: 20 GB free space
  • Network: Broadband connection (for Azure services and container downloads)

If your machine can't meet these requirements, you may need to consider upgrading.

Next Steps

Once you have the prerequisites installed, continue to the Quick Start guide.