Ask HN: Are you still using spec driven development?

Especially interested in people using AI for brownfield development, but generally interested in if people are continuing down the spec driven path, or if agents + skills/prompts/mcp/agents.md/something else is filling the niche spec driven development was trying to capture.

Question was prompted by seeing spec kit have no commits for over a month an no obvious integration with GitHub’s new agents integration.

3 points | by cherry_tree 1 day ago

3 comments

  • raw_anon_1111 3 hours ago
    I just looked up what it was and I heard people talk about it. I just realized I was doing something close without realizing it.

    Every new project (cloud consulting + app dev), I feed in the contract, transcripts of my discovery sessions, my labeled architecture diagram, transcript of the design review discussion and any other artifacts.

    First I have to create Epics and stories anyway for the PMO even if I am working on it by myself.

    Then I ask ChatGPT what the phases should be, I tweak it , break it down, give it more details, etc

    Finally, I ask it to give me unrendered markdown with the details and a checklist and that’s the starting point of my repo.

    As I’m using Codex (I never seem to hit limits with my $20 a month plan) and Claude (better at troubleshooting), I tell them to update my document with what’s done, guidance I’ve given it etc.

    I treat both of them like junior devs and keep my hands on the wheel and test and verify each phase.

    Yes I know I’m fortunate that all of my work is greenfield -> empty repo and empty AWS account that I ask the client for.

  • firemelt 10 hours ago
    id there really a development without a spec?

    even though u not write it there is still a specification in ur brain when you type the code/prompt right?

  • cherry_tree 1 day ago
    Personally, I still find tools like spec kit give reliably good results in brownfield codebases, but that as I’ve improved my ability to break apart work and describe it, straight prompting has come back as a viable method to perform simple changes.