Tracer

Local, offline requirements tracing for small engineering projects.

Tracer keeps the verification chain intact: intent, requirement, verification, evidence.

Edit a requirement and the verification that relied on the old version is immediately marked stale.

Quick Start

docker run --rm \
  -p 127.0.0.1:3000:3000 \
  -v tracer-data:/data \
  ghcr.io/finorr/tracer:latest

Open http://localhost:3000.

The first image pull requires internet access. After that, the app runs locally and stores its data in the Docker volume mounted at /data.

Data

Tracer stores everything in SQLite at /data/tracer.db inside the container.

Back up the database:

docker run --rm \
  -v tracer-data:/data \
  -v "$PWD":/backup \
  busybox cp /data/tracer.db /backup/tracer.db

Reset local data:

docker volume rm tracer-data

What It Tracks

Everything is an item: intent, requirement, verification, or risk. Evidence is recorded on verification runs.

Relationships can:

• refine: break intent into requirements
• verify: link a verification to what it must prove
• mitigate: connect a risk to its control

The app derives requirement status automatically:

• requirements without verification are unverified
• verifications without a run are stale
• editing a requirement makes its verification stale until re-run
• the trace matrix shows gaps across the project

Screenshots

Requirement chain	Trace matrix	User stories

Local Development

Local development requires Node.js 24 or newer.

npm install
npm run dev

By default, development data is stored in .data/tracer.db. Override it with:

TRACER_DB_PATH=/path/to/tracer.db npm run dev

Useful checks:

npm run typecheck
npm run build
docker build -t tracer:local .

Stack

• Next.js 14
• React 18
• SQLite via Node's built-in node:sqlite
• TypeScript

License

MIT