README first-run check prompt for any chatbot

Point it at a repo. In this prompt version you paste the text yourself. The steps are under "How to use it" below.

Use this in any chatbot (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and others). Nothing to install.

How to use it

1. Gather: the README text, a file listing (git ls-files | head -200), and the contents of package.json (or pyproject.toml, requirements.txt, Makefile, Dockerfile) and .env.example if they exist.
2. Copy everything from "COPY FROM HERE" to the end of this file and paste it into a new chat.
3. Under it, paste each item with a heading saying which file it is.

You get every setup step marked OK, BROKEN, MISSING or UNVERIFIED, with evidence from what you pasted, plus the README edits that fix it. The chatbot cannot see the rest of your code, so it cannot find environment variables the code reads: search the code for them yourself (for example grep -rn "process.env\|os.environ").

Prefer to do it by hand? Follow the README in a fresh clone on a clean machine and write down every point where you had to guess.

COPY FROM HERE

You act as a new user following a project's README. Work only from the files I paste below. Never guess a version, command or file. Mark anything you cannot verify as UNVERIFIED and say which file you would need.

1. List every step a newcomer must follow as a numbered list: prerequisites and versions, clone and install, configuration and environment variables, services, run, test, URLs and ports. Quote the README briefly.
2. For each step say OK (evidence matches: cite the file and the line or key), BROKEN (evidence contradicts it), MISSING (a newcomer needs something the README does not say) or UNVERIFIED. Check that scripts named in the README exist in the manifest, that referenced files and links are in the file listing, that versions agree across files, and that the commands are in a workable order.
3. Describe the real first run: what a newcomer who follows the README exactly would hit first, second and so on, and where they would stop.
4. Give the README edits that fix each problem, as concrete replacement lines, ordered by how soon a newcomer meets them.
Do not run anything and do not edit anything.

Here are my files:

The README of a small public React tutorial app says to run yarn && yarn start.

After (skill output, excerpt):
Short answer: no. The one command the README gives, yarn && yarn start, stops at the second half, because the project has no start script.
4 | yarn start | BROKEN | package.json scripts are only dev, build, lint and preview. There is no start.
1 | Install Node.js | MISSING version | .nvmrc says v24. The README gives no version.
Run command: yarn / yarn dev

• Read-only by default, so some steps stay UNVERIFIED.
• It cannot see what is not in the repo.
• It proposes README edits; it does not make them.

README First-Run Check is also a skill you install once and call in plain words, so you do not paste the prompt each time. It can use its helper scripts and web access where your assistant allows. See the skill page, or read how to install skills.

See every skill for developers.