Before working with AI-powered development tools, I thought writing code was the primary skill of a software developer. Recently, I’ve started to realize that writing good specifications may be just as important.
When working with coding agents, vague requirements almost always produce vague results. On the other hand, a clear specification often leads to surprisingly good implementations.
I’ve become much more conscious about defining requirements, acceptance criteria, and expected behavior before starting development. Not only does this improve the output from AI tools, but it also makes collaboration with other developers easier.
In many ways, spec-driven development feels like a natural evolution of software engineering in an AI-assisted world. The better we can describe a problem, the better the tools can help us solve it.