Spec-Driven Development

Spec-driven development isn't waterfall with markdown. It's not a productivity trap. It's also not a silver bullet. The honest version is more useful than either the evangelist or the cynic gets credit for — and it's why your AI coding agent stops shipping the wrong thing.

2 of 52 pages published · written for solo founders and small teams shipping with Cursor, Claude Code, Codex, and Gemini.

Read in order

The pages below assume the prior ones were read. Complexity and audience size grow as you scroll: solo workflow first, team rollout in the middle, multi-repo and multi-agent at the end.

Part 2

Authoring your first spec

Anatomy, sizing, acceptance criteria, mindset, substrate, lifecycle, longevity.

  1. 6. The minimal spec format Chapter Coming soon
  2. 7. How granular should a spec be? Q&A Coming soon
  3. 8. Acceptance criteria agents can actually execute Chapter Coming soon
  4. 9. Treating AI prompts like functions Chapter Coming soon
  5. 10. Stop debugging AI output — start writing better specs instead Chapter Coming soon
  6. 11. Is markdown the right substrate for AI specs? Q&A Coming soon
  7. 12. Living specs vs frozen specs Chapter Coming soon
  8. 13. How to build specs today that won't become tomorrow's refactor Chapter Coming soon
Part 3

SDD vs adjacent practices

Orienting SDD against TDD, RFC, and PRD — practices you already know.

  1. 14. SDD vs TDD — when test-first beats spec-first Chapter Coming soon
  2. 15. SDD vs RFC / design-docs process Chapter Coming soon
  3. 16. Are specs better than PRDs? Q&A Coming soon
Part 4

Choosing your framework

Landscape, multi-framework comparisons, head-to-heads, decision tree.

  1. 17. The framework landscape: where SDD tooling stands in 2026 Listicle Coming soon
  2. 18. Lightweight SDD frameworks compared Roundup Coming soon
  3. 19. GitHub Spec Kit vs. Tekk.coach vs. ChatPRD Comparison Coming soon
  4. 20. Tekk.coach vs BMAD vs Get Shit Done (GSD) Comparison Coming soon
  5. 21. Tekk.coach vs Traycer vs OpenSpec Comparison Coming soon
  6. 22. Choosing your SDD framework — a decision tree Chapter Coming soon
Part 5

Running SDD solo

Agent stack, solo workflow, reviewing AI-generated PRs without a teammate.

  1. 23. Spec-driven development with your coding agent stack Chapter Coming soon
  2. 24. SDD for solo developers Chapter Coming soon
  3. 25. How to review AI-generated PRs without slowing your team to a crawl Q&A Coming soon
Part 6

When SDD breaks

Anti-patterns, drift, the honest math of AI-assisted coding.

  1. 26. 10 SDD anti-patterns and how to spot each one early Listicle Coming soon
  2. 27. Spec-driven development doesn't solve AI drift — what actually does? Q&A Coming soon
  3. 28. Why AI coding agents skip your best practices Chapter Coming soon
  4. 29. 10x productivity, 100x bugs? The honest math of AI-assisted coding Chapter Coming soon
  5. 30. How to tell if your team is actually doing SDD (5-question test) Listicle Coming soon
Part 7

Scaling SDD across a team

Standardization, vertical slices, contracts, multi-repo coordination.

  1. 31. How to standardize AI coding across a dev team — a 30-day rollout playbook Chapter Coming soon
  2. 32. How do you ship vertical slices with SDD across teams and repos? Q&A Coming soon
  3. 33. How to negotiate cross-team API contracts when each team uses a different coding agent Q&A Coming soon
  4. 34. The two-doc pattern for multi-repo specs: coordinator + implementation Chapter Coming soon
  5. 35. How to distribute an AI coding handbook across 30 repos Q&A Coming soon
  6. 36. SDD + Git / PR-driven specs Chapter Coming soon
Part 8

Multi-repo & enterprise

The 30-repo scaling cliff, how context travels between codebases.

  1. 37. When SDD hits 30 repos: what breaks first Chapter Coming soon
  2. 38. Multi-repo microservices meet AI coding: how to pass context between codebases Chapter Coming soon
Part 9

Brownfield & domain applications

Migrating existing codebases or applying SDD in specialized contexts.

  1. 39. Brownfield SDD — adding specs to an existing codebase Chapter Coming soon
  2. 40. Has anyone actually built a brownfield feature with SDD? Q&A Coming soon
  3. 41. The quiet spread of SDD — Go, data engineering, game dev, formal methods Chapter Coming soon
  4. 42. SDD for ML / AI projects Chapter Coming soon
  5. 43. Does spec-driven development work for data engineering? Q&A Coming soon
Part 10

Multi-agent orchestration

The frontier of running Cursor + Codex + Claude Code in parallel.

  1. 44. How to run multiple coding agents in parallel without merge hell — a working pattern Chapter Coming soon
  2. 45. The orchestration tool survey: Vibe Kanban, sdd-flow, SyncPoint, Conductor (Google), Roo, and the others Roundup Coming soon
  3. 46. How do you keep multiple coding agents from drifting out of sync when they work in parallel? Q&A Coming soon
Part 11

The bigger picture

Critique, career, frontier, resources, FAQ.

  1. 47. The honest critique: is SDD real, or another buzzword cycle? Chapter Coming soon
  2. 48. Should I change careers after 10+ years in software? Q&A Coming soon
  3. 49. The research frontier Listicle Coming soon
  4. 50. SDD courses, videos & external resources Resources Coming soon
  5. 51. Mega-FAQ — every other SDD question, answered FAQ Coming soon
  6. 52. Kiro vs Tekk.coach vs Cursor 2.0: IDE-coupled, platform, and agentic IDE compared Comparison Coming soon

Stop prompting. Start shipping.

Connect your repo. Describe the problem. Get a spec your agents can execute.