Spec-driven development has a verification hole
In part one I argued that markdown won the specification layer without anyone holding a vote, and that we carried version control and code review across to it and left the rest of our discipline behind. This is the specific thing that absence lets through. Spec-driven development is mostly right, and I say that as someone who has reorganised how my team works around it. The argument is sound.…
Spec-driven development appears to function correctly, as its proponents assert. However, the methodology conceals a critical oversight that undermines its effectiveness. When producing code becomes effortless, the specification's quality assumes paramount importance. Sean Grove articulates this concept clearly in "The New Code": prompts are temporary, whereas a versioned spec remains consistent over time.
Various real-world implementations, such as GitHub's Spec Kit, AWS Kiro, and Claude Code, have adopted this approach. At the movement's most extreme end, humans solely edit the spec, treating code as a compiled artifact. While this direction is deemed correct, the standardized formats lack a crucial element.
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