Spec Driven Development: How Structured Specs Keep AI Coding Agents on Track
Spec driven development replaces vague prompts with formal specification documents as the authoritative source of truth for AI coding agents, aiming to prevent scope drift and misinterpretation. The workflow follows seven phases — constitution, specify, clarify, plan, tasks, implement, and analyze — with a human review gate between each stage. A key technique involves writing acceptance criteria in EARS notation, converting ambiguous requirements into precise, testable statements that agents cannot easily misread. Critics note that poorly implemented versions of this approach can resemble traditional waterfall development with an AI layer added on top. Tools supporting the methodology include the open-source GitHub Spec Kit and AWS Kiro, an agentic IDE that reached international general availability on May 7, 2026, with over 250,000 developers already on board.
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