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Setting up SpecForge on Windows

This guide will walk you through setting up SpecForge on Windows.

1. Installation

Download specforge-x.y.z-Windows-X64-en-US.msi from the SpecForge releases page and run the installer.

The MSI installer will:

  • Install SpecForge to C:\Program Files\Imiron\SpecForge\
  • Add SpecForge to your system PATH automatically
  • Include all required dependencies (Z3, rsvg-convert)

Standalone Executable

Download specforge-x.y.z-Windows-X64.zip from the SpecForge releases page and extract it to a directory of your choice.

Note: With this method, you need to manually install dependencies.

The SpecForge executable requires Z3 and rsvg-converter (optional) to be installed on your system.

Open PowerShell as Administrator and run:

choco install z3 rsvg-convert

If you don’t have Chocolatey, you can install it from chocolatey.org.

Manual Installation

If you prefer not to use a package manager, download Z3 directly from the Z3 releases page and add it to your PATH.

2. Configure Your Edition and License

SpecForge defaults to the Community Edition when no tier or license is configured. The commercial tier runs the Essential Edition with project-size limits unless a valid license enables the Enterprise Edition. See Editions, usage tiers, and licenses for details and instructions for changing tiers.

To run the Enterprise Edition, place your license.json file in one of the following locations:

SpecForge also searches for *-license.json in the standard configuration and current directories before these license.json paths. If SPECFORGE_LICENSE_FILE is set, only that file is searched.

  • Standard Configuration Directory (recommended):

    • %APPDATA%\specforge\license.json
    • Typically: C:\Users\YourUsername\AppData\Roaming\specforge\license.json

  • Environment Variable (for custom locations):

    $env:SPECFORGE_LICENSE_FILE="C:\path\to\license.json"

  • Current Directory: .\license.json

Create the directory if it doesn’t exist. You can do this in PowerShell:

New-Item -ItemType Directory -Force -Path "$env:APPDATA\specforge"
Copy-Item "C:\path\to\your\license.json" "$env:APPDATA\specforge\license.json"

3. Configure LLM Provider (Optional)

To use LLM-based features such as natural-language spec generation and error explanation, configure an LLM provider by setting environment variables before starting the server.

For OpenAI (recommended):

$env:SPECFORGE_LLM_PROVIDER="openai"
$env:SPECFORGE_LLM_MODEL="gpt-5-nano-2025-08-07"
$env:OPENAI_API_KEY="your-api-key-here"

Get an API key from platform.openai.com/api-keys.

For other providers (Gemini, Anthropic, Ollama), see the LLM Provider Configuration guide.

4. Start the Server

If you used the MSI installer, run from any directory:

specforge serve

If you used the standalone executable, navigate to the directory where you extracted the SpecForge executable and run:

.\specforge.exe serve

The server will start on http://localhost:8080. You can verify it’s running by navigating to http://localhost:8080/health, which should show version information.

5. Install the VSCode Extension

Install the SpecForge VSCode extension from the Visual Studio Marketplace or see the VSCode Extension setup guide.

6. Install the Python SDK (Optional)

The Python SDK enables interaction with the SpecForge server programmatically from Python. This can be used to embed SpecForge analyses in Python notebooks and directly feed and retrieve data using Pandas Dataframes. See the Python SDK setup guide for instructions on how to set it up.

Further Reading