Pattern: Spec-driven development

Drive AI coding agents from explicit, versioned specifications rather than freeform prompting: capture decisions, write a plan/spec, execute against it, verify against it. GSD’s whole five-phase loop is an instance — it pairs spec-driven development with meta-prompting and context engineering. openspec is the wiki’s purest instance: its name is the practice (spec-driven development), and its four principles — fluid, iterative, easy, brownfield-first — are the clearest statement of the ethos. speckit is the wiki’s reference implementation of the idea: GitHub’s toolkit whose entire premise is “specifications don’t serve code — code serves specifications.”

Frameworks differ on how durable the spec is. GSD, Matt Pocock, and Addy write a per-change spec/PRD/plan that is executed then left behind — as does nano-spec, whose per-task 4-file pack is the most ephemeral instance. OpenSpec sits at the opposite pole: a permanent, self-updating spec with each change expressed as a delta against it — the pattern-living-specification specialization.

Applied by (backlinks)

GSD:

• gsd-discuss-phase — captures decisions into the spec.
• gsd-plan-phase — turns the spec into an executable plan.
• gsd-verify-work — validates the build against the spec.
• gsd-ship — closes the iteration against the spec.
• gsd-planner — authors the plan from artifacts only.

Addy Osmani — Agent Skills:

• addy-spec-driven-development — drives the agent from an explicit, versioned spec.

OpenSpec:

• openspec-propose — authors the spec (as deltas) before code.
• openspec-apply — implements against the spec deltas + design.
• openspec-verify — validates the build against the spec artifacts.
• openspec-sync · openspec-archive — fold the delta back into the living spec.

Spec Kit:

• speckit-specify — defines the spec (WHAT/WHY) before code.
• speckit-plan — turns the spec into a technical plan validated against the constitution.

BMAD:

• bmad-prd — authors the durable PRD that drives the build.
• bmad-architecture — turns the PRD into the architecture spine.
• bmad-spec — the lightweight SPEC.md kernel on the Quick-Flow path.

gstack:

• gstack-spec — turns vague intent into a precise, executable five-phase spec with a Codex quality gate.

Builder Methods — BM Skills:

• bm-prd-creator — a non-technical-builder interview producing the PRD the build runs against.

nano-spec:

• nano-spec-create — the minimalist instance: a fixed 4-file pack (artifact-nano-spec-pack) as the smallest useful spec, then drive the agent from it.

Agent OS:

• agent-os-shape-spec — shapes (rather than generates) a spec in the harness’s Plan Mode into a persistent, standards-bound pack; v3 delegates spec authoring to the model and keeps only the structuring + durability.

See Also

• pattern-living-specification — OpenSpec’s specialization: a permanent, delta-maintained spec.
• pattern-project-constitution — Spec Kit’s specialization: principles externalized into a governing document.
• pattern-fresh-context-subagents, pattern-plan-verification-loop
• gsd, openspec, speckit — frameworks built on this pattern.