GitHub Spec Kit: A specification-centered development philosophy

During a recent conference where GitHub was invited, I discovered Spec Kit, a methodological approach that immediately caught my attention. In a development ecosystem saturated with “black box” tools with opaque functioning, Spec Kit stands out through its radical transparency: detailing in a precise and accessible manner the methodology that will be followed throughout the entire development cycle.

This approach addresses the shortcomings of “vibe coding” - the tendency to develop by relying solely on intuition and informal discussions. How many projects have drifted due to lack of clear specifications? How many hours lost debugging features poorly understood from their conception? Spec Kit offers an elegant response: placing specification at the heart of the development process, not as an administrative constraint, but as a tool for clarification and collaboration.

More than a simple framework, Spec Kit embodies a software development philosophy that prioritizes upstream thinking, transparent communication, and team alignment. An approach that transforms documentation from a necessary chore into a true quality catalyst.

GitHub’s Spec-First philosophy

GitHub’s Spec-First approach operates a fundamental paradigm shift: it puts functional specification back at the center of the production process. Where traditional development tends to minimize this phase in favor of rapid “action taking,” Spec Kit values and structures this crucial step.

This philosophy places preliminary reflection at the heart of the methodology. Before the first line of code, the team invests time in deep understanding of the problem to be solved. This focus on the upstream phase allows identifying gray areas, ambiguities, and technical constraints from the start, thus avoiding costly corrections during development.

Spec Kit advocates for creating exhaustive documentation that doesn’t just describe “what” to do, but also explains “why” and “how.” This documentation becomes a living repository, updated as new developments and project evolutions unfold. It constitutes the team’s collective memory and facilitates the integration of new collaborators.

The Spec-First philosophy restores dignity to often neglected activities: writing detailed specifications, modeling interactions, anticipating use cases. These tasks, perceived as time-consuming in a classical approach, become strategic investments that accelerate and secure the entire development process.

Spec Kit’s methodological pillars

Spec Kit structures its philosophy around a process of seven distinct steps, each with a precise objective and contributing to the overall quality of the deliverable. This methodology transforms development into a predictable and reproducible workflow. For complete process documentation, consult the official GitHub Spec Kit repository.

The first step /speckit.constitution consists of defining the project’s governance rules. This constitutional document establishes quality standards, testing practices, performance requirements, and user experience principles. These guidelines serve as a constant reference for all subsequent technical decisions, ensuring consistency in implementation choices.

The specification step /speckit.specify focuses exclusively on functional needs, without technical consideration. The objective is to capture business intent exhaustively: user stories, acceptance criteria, functional constraints. This strict separation between “what” and “how” avoids premature technical biases.

The clarification process /speckit.clarify uses structured questioning to identify and resolve ambiguities. This preventive step considerably reduces back-and-forth in the implementation phase by forcing precision of requirements before any development.

The planning phase /speckit.plan translates specifications into concrete technical choices: technology stack, data architecture, API design. This step produces a detailed implementation plan with thorough technical research, particularly important for emerging technologies.

The decomposition step /speckit.tasks transforms the technical plan into atomic and ordered tasks. This granularity allows precise tracking of progress, optimal parallelization of developments, and a structured TDD approach. Each task includes its dependencies and validation criteria.

The analysis /speckit.analyze verifies consistency between all produced artifacts: specification-plan alignment, functional coverage, conflict detection. This cross-validation prevents implementation drift and ensures requirement traceability.

The final implementation /speckit.implement rigorously follows the task plan, with continuous validation and structured error handling. The AI agent has all the necessary context to produce code aligned with the initial specifications.

My personal experience with the research.md document

What particularly appeals to me about Spec Kit is the generation of the research.md document during the planning phase. This artifact, often overlooked, provides fascinating insight into the AI agent’s decision-making process. It documents the reasoning behind technical choices, the alternatives considered, and the trade-offs evaluated during specification creation.

This transparency into the model’s thought process transforms what could be perceived as a “black box” decision into an auditable and understandable reasoning chain. The research document becomes a technical diary that captures not only what was decided, but why it was decided, creating invaluable context for future maintenance and evolution phases.

For teams working with AI agents, this level of explainability represents a significant leap forward in building trust and understanding between human developers and artificial intelligence.

From theory to practice

Spec Kit integrates naturally into different development contexts. Ideal for new projects where it can structure the approach from conception, it can also integrate into existing projects when adding major new features. This flexibility allows progressive adoption without major disruption to established workflows.

The main benefit I observe lies in the drastic reduction of back-and-forth between specification and implementation. By investing time in the upstream clarification phase, Spec Kit avoids cycles of correction and debugging of code generated by the AI agent. This preventive approach transforms hours of debugging into minutes of precise specification.

The impact is particularly felt during the integration of new developers: having exhaustive and up-to-date documentation significantly accelerates skill development and reduces mentoring load.

Spec Kit’s efficiency varies according to project scope. On new projects and small-sized applications, benefits are immediate: the structured process avoids false starts and guarantees linear development. For complex projects or legacy systems, adoption requires a larger initial investment, but should prove more profitable in the medium term with the continuous improvement of AI agent capabilities.

Despite its advantages, Spec Kit adoption may encounter certain resistances. The perception of “documentary bureaucracy” may slow down teams accustomed to rapid agile development. It is crucial to demonstrate that this approach doesn’t burden the process but rationalizes it, transforming time spent debugging into time invested in clarification.

Impact on team culture

Spec Kit is not a simple tool but the symptom of a profound transformation: the acceleration of the spec-driven approach for software development. This evolution is part of a larger movement where artificial intelligence redefines traditional development paradigms. We are witnessing a shift toward a model where specification becomes the new source code.

This approach fundamentally transforms the developer profession, which evolves from a technical executor to a specification architect. The developer becomes a translator of business intentions, a system designer, and an orchestrator of intelligent agents. This mutation questions traditional skills and redefines human added value in the software creation process.

This transformation raises profound questions about the future of the profession, which I explore in more detail in my article Is this the end of software engineers as we know it?.

This transformation is necessarily accompanied by resistances, which are understandable and legitimate. Some developers may perceive this evolution as a devaluation of their technical skills or a loss of creative autonomy. Others fear excessive standardization that would stifle innovation.

These resistances reveal deeper issues: redefinition of professional identity, evolution of performance criteria, and questioning the place of humans in an increasingly automated process. Accompanying this transition requires open dialogue about these concerns and progressive training in the new required skills.

GitHub’s Spec-First approach represents much more than a simple methodology: it embodies a mature and pragmatic vision of AI-assisted development. Where detractors of the agentic approach legitimately point out the limits of “vibe coding” and the unpredictability of results, Spec Kit provides a structured and convincing response.

This methodology demonstrates that it is possible to reconcile the power of AI agents with the rigor necessary for professional development. By putting specification back at the center of the process, it transforms AI from a random code generator into a reliable and deterministic development partner.

The benefits are tangible: reduction of correction cycles, improvement of documentary quality, acceleration of onboarding, and above all, transformation of the developer into a solution architect rather than a simple coder. This evolution of the profession, far from being a threat, represents an opportunity for skill elevation and refocusing on human added value.

Experimentation is now within everyone’s reach. I strongly encourage you to test and explore this approach on your next projects. Start small, on an isolated feature, and observe the difference. The learning curve is quick and the first results speak for themselves.

The ideal cocktail to maximize this approach would be to associate Codex and Spec Kit: the code generation power of Codex coupled with the structured methodology of Spec Kit would offer an optimal development experience, combining specificational precision and technical excellence.

Spec Kit is not the culmination but the beginning of a transformation that will redefine our relationship to software development. By adopting this philosophy today, we collectively participate in the emergence of a more intelligent, more efficient, and more human paradigm.

To start your exploration, visit the GitHub Spec Kit repository and let this methodology transform your approach to development.