spec-kit

Well, I get impressive results with Kiro [0] by AWS. It's specs-based but takes a lot longer than just generating a whole working program with a single prompt. GitHub has their Spec Kit [1] and there's OpenSpec [2] now, so, things will get better. [0]: https://kiro.dev/ [1]: https://github.com/github/spec-kit [2]: https://openspec.dev/

You are thinking of https://github.com/github/spec-kit

People keep comparing LLMs to automated looms, but I find them more comparable to cruise control than autopilot. I've been working on a character sheet application for a while, and decided to vibe-code it with Spec-kit to help me write up a specification, and for things I know it's been great. I tried using Claude to make it into a PWA (something I don't know very well) as an experiment, and I've found the nanosecond the model strays out of my experience and knowledge everything goes straight to Hell. It wraps my codebase around a tree as if I'm not paying attention while driving. It's a tool you'll have to learn to use, but I can say with absolute confidence it's no replacement for actual skills, if anything it highlights the gulf between people who know what they're doing and people who don't, for better and worse. It sacrifices some

GitHub's SpecKit is an example: https://github.com/github/spec-kit Spec-Driven Development treats the spec as the source of truth and the code as an artifact. As you develop, you modify/add to the spec and the codebase gets updated to reflect it. Personally I'm doubtful it can compete with traditional artisanal software engineering, as it's (IMHO) boils down to "if only you can spec it precisely enough, it'll work" and we've tried this with 5GL and (to some extent) BDD, and it doesn't get you to 100%. I do think it's interesting enough to explore, and most of us could use a bit more details in our Jira tickets.

I came back to this. NOBODY mentioned speckit! https://github.com/github/spec-kit """ Spec-Driven Development flips the script on traditional software development. For decades, code has been king — specifications were just scaffolding we built and discarded once the "real work" of coding began. Spec-Driven Development changes this: specifications become executable, directly generating working implementations rather than just guiding them. """ The takeaway is that instead of vibecoding you write specs and you get the LLM to align the generated code to the specs.