glossary · term
spec-driven development
A way of building software in which a structured, versioned specification is written and reviewed before any code is generated. It then becomes the input to every agent in the pipeline. The spec captures intended behavior, constraints, interfaces, decisions, risks, and verification criteria. It lives next to the code and changes with it.
in practice
How I use the term
I don't mean a Word document that goes stale by sprint two. A payment cancellation feature starts life as "allow the user to cancel." A real spec says whether partial cancellations are allowed and what happens after settlement. It names the audit events retained and the downstream systems that receive the reversal.
Once those decisions are explicit, generating the code is still real work, but it's no longer the most ambiguous work. Spec review is becoming the new code review.
The claim has limits. A spec can't check its own frame, and in a legacy estate the running system may be the only complete record of what it does.
in the essays · 4
Where it shows up
- From Vibe Mode to Spec Mode: Why I’m All In on Kiro
Where the shift starts: trading improvised prompting for structure.
- Spec, Standards, Specialists: How I Actually Build with AI
The working loop: one refined spec, house standards, and specialist agents.
- The Spec Is the Product
The full argument for the spec as the durable asset.
- The Bottleneck Is Never the Stack: What Held and What Moved
The claim narrowed after five more months of practice.
see: Context Spine · agentic SDLC · prompt