One Developer, Two Projects, Four Spec Standards: How Context Decided the Winner

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A solo developer working on two side projects — a cat-tracking app and an '80s-style arcade game — evaluated four specification-driven development standards: Spec Kit, Kiro (AWS), PRD plus ADR, and OpenSpec. Each standard was assessed against the specific risks and needs of each project rather than on abstract merit. The cat app, which had well-defined requirements upfront, adopted OpenSpec for its stable baseline approach, borrowing the Constitution Check from Spec Kit and ADR logging from the Nygard format. The arcade game, with its fluid and evolving requirements, suited Spec Kit better due to its gated milestone workflow that enforces structured progression through specification, planning, and tasks. The key takeaway is that choosing a specification standard depends on a project's primary risk — requirement drift versus requirement discovery — rather than any universal ranking of the formats.

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