Spec-driven development – Definition & Meaning

Definition of spec-driven development

: an AI-assisted software-development approach in which written requirements, designs, constraints, and acceptance criteria are created before implementation and used as persistent instructions and verification targets for coding agents
- The team used spec-driven development so the coding agent had agreed acceptance criteria before changing the payment flow.
- A version-controlled specification let reviewers compare the generated code with the behavior the feature was meant to provide.

Origin & history

first known use2025

Software engineering has long used specifications and specification-first methods. The current AI-coding sense of spec-driven development became prominent in 2025 through tools and workflows such as Amazon's Kiro and GitHub's Spec Kit, which turn specifications into plans, tasks, implementation steps, and review artifacts for coding agents.

Test yourself

Which of these is the meaning of spec-driven development?

Related terms

vibe coding a way of building software by describing what you want to an AI in plain language and… agentic coding software development in which an AI agent plans changes, edits many files, runs tests and… coding agent an AI agent built to work on software: it reads a codebase, writes and edits code across many… harness engineering the work of building everything around an AI model that lets it act as a reliable agent… eval a set of test cases used to measure how well a model or AI feature performs on the tasks you… human-in-the-loop describing a system in which a person reviews, approves, or corrects an AI's work at key…

Cite this entry

"Spec-driven development." AI Dictionary, Dadgogo, https://dadgogo.com/dictionary/spec-driven-development/. Accessed 5 Oct. 2026.