No prerequisites. I installed it on my Mac and Ubuntu systems easily. I also did this write up on ESPHome configuration with VSCode/Cursor. I need to update it slightly as I figured out how to launch the whole thing with one hot key CTRL-R while in the editor. This speeds up the process immensely.
I really wish there was a debugger for ESPHome in VSCode that let you cycle through the code, set breakpoints and watch variables change like there is in all other languages. Perhaps there is a way to do that and I just haven’t discovered it yet.