diff --git a/.gitignore b/.gitignore
index df902c9..d019926 100644
--- a/.gitignore
+++ b/.gitignore
@@ -1,3 +1,4 @@
 /files
 /sources
-/tmp
\ No newline at end of file
+/tmp
+.idea/
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index fbf9504..8244817 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -23,6 +23,15 @@ These are the data sources currently used.
 - STM32Cube database: describes all MCUs, with useful stuff like GPIO AF mappings, DMA stream mappings, pinouts...
 - stm32-rs SVDs: register blocks. YAMLs are extracted and manually cleaned up.
 
+## Install pre-requisites
+
+In order to run the generator, you will need to install the following tools:
+
+* `wget`
+* `git`
+* `jq`
+* `svd` – `pip3 install svdtools` 
+
 ## Generating the YAMLs
 
 - Run `./d download_all`
diff --git a/d b/d
index c16baf0..698e128 100755
--- a/d
+++ b/d
@@ -3,6 +3,12 @@
 set -e
 cd $(dirname $0)
 
+die() { echo "$*" 1>&2; exit 1; }
+
+for i in jq wget svd git; do
+    command -v "$i" &>/dev/null || die "Missing the command line tool '$i'"
+done
+
 case "$1" in
     download_all)
         ./d download_mcufinder