Spec-Driven Development is starting to get attention in the coding community, and for good reason. I believe it represents the future of software engineering because it shifts the focus back to where it belongs: functionality, design, and security. Too often teams get bogged down debating how code should be written or optimized, when what really matters is capturing the purpose and intent of the software.
Anyone who has worked on a project knows this. The thing that sinks most efforts is not missing a clever algorithm or a performance tweak. It is losing sight of the why. Spec-Driven Development offers a real way to solve that problem. The concern I have is that we may already be heading off in the wrong direction.
This piece is also a progression of ideas I shared in my earlier article, The Future of Software Engineering Belongs to People Who Understand the Why. At the time I argued that clarity of intent was the most important thing we could preserve in the shift to AI-driven development. Spec-Driven Development feels like the next step in that conversation.
The Promise of Spec-Driven Development
A few weeks ago GitHub released an open-source “Spec Kit” designed to scaffold projects. The idea is straightforward: provide scripts that generate documents like requirements, plans, and standards in a consistent and portable structure. These are artifacts we have always used, but formalizing them into a format that is easy to carry across projects makes them much more powerful. Especially in an era where AI is helping to write and manage code.
Spec-Driven Development is exactly what it sounds like: you define the specifications of a project up front, and those specs drive everything else. In the AI Coding CLI space, this usually means creating a handful of structured documents at the very start of a project. Those documents describe requirements, design choices, and standards in a way that both humans and AI tools can understand. The AI then uses those specs as the foundation for scaffolding code, generating tests, or even suggesting architecture. In other words, the specs are not just paperwork; they are the anchor that keeps AI-generated work aligned with intent.
The real opportunity here is inclusivity. Software engineers will still be needed, but the process of engineering is opening up to more voices. Product managers, compliance teams, designers, and planners should all be able to shape project intent. That is not a threat to engineering. It is an expansion of it.
It is also a reminder that “vibe coding” was never real. Making it up as you go along has always been a recipe for failure. What works is experience, vision, and professional standards. AI does not replace that. In fact, it allows us to own our products and services more fully by making the reasoning behind them clearer. Our methods should reflect that.
Where We Risk Going Wrong
The GitHub kit is clever, but it leans heavily on GitHub workflows. That risks creating a new barrier for professionals outside the development cycle. A project manager should not need to learn pull requests just to read a requirements file. If Spec-Driven Development is going to broaden participation, the artifacts must live beyond a single tool or platform.
I also worry about tone. Naming a file CONSTITUTION.md instead of something plain like ProjectGuidelines.md, or coining verbs like “taskify,” may sound playful but it narrows the audience. These choices signal that the practice is a developer in-joke rather than a shared framework. The risk is alienating the very people we want to bring into the process.
Finally, there is the problem of volatility. Spec Kit feels experimental, more like an early npm library than a mature standard. That is exciting for developers but it is a bad fit for business processes that require stability and clarity. If organizations try it too early and get burned, the whole idea of Spec-Driven Development could lose credibility.
My Takeaway
For my projects I use a small set of documents:
- PRD.md (Product Requirements Document)
- TDD.md (Technical Design Document)
- PLAN.md (Implementation Plan)
- STANDARDS.md (Coding Standards)
Nothing fancy, but they are easy to understand and portable across any project. Most importantly, they capture intent in a way that everyone on a team can follow. I do this in the project I created to run this site, and you can find those living documents here in all their messy glory.
Spec-Driven Development has enormous potential, but only if we avoid gimmicks and keep the door open to all stakeholders. If you are thinking about trying it, my advice is to start simple. Use plain documents that make sense to everyone in your organization. Keep them portable and practical.
I would also love to hear from you. How is your team approaching Spec-Driven Development? Have you tried GitHub’s kit, or are you building your own? And how can we make sure this process is not just for developers, but also for project managers, product owners, and anyone else with a stake in success?
If Spec-Driven Development is going to shape the future of engineering, it should belong to all of us.