diff --git a/dev-requirements.txt b/dev-requirements.txt
index 5b853822..84612025 100644
--- a/dev-requirements.txt
+++ b/dev-requirements.txt
@@ -8,3 +8,6 @@ pytest>=3.3
 notebook
 requests-mock
 virtualenv
+# temporary pin of attrs for jsonschema 0.3.0a1
+# seems to be a pip bug
+attrs>=17.4.0
diff --git a/requirements.txt b/requirements.txt
index 1c6f0fbf..33ce10b8 100644
--- a/requirements.txt
+++ b/requirements.txt
@@ -9,4 +9,3 @@ python-dateutil
 SQLAlchemy>=1.1
 requests
 prometheus_client>=0.0.21
-attrs>=17.4.0