Spec.md

Thu, 26 Feb 2026 23:12:50 +0000

The spec.md file is the single most important document produced as part of the speckit’s SDD workflow. It is the first piece of documentation produced, setting the direction for the remaining documentation. It is the most durable artifact of the documentation. The spec.md file is the only place that captures what the program is supposed to accomplish, and why this behavior is being implemented. It is information dense, and durable. Since it describes what the program should do, without getting into the details of how, it is most likely to remain relevant over time.

My first Spec-Driven Development project

Tue, 24 Feb 2026 15:50:31 +0000

Previous: Introducing FrozenDB

“Look ma, no hands” - I wrote FrozenDB without writing lines of code. Instead, I used spec-driven development to generate all of the user stories, map them carefully to technical requirements and have AI generate the code. I’ll go into SDD more deeply later, but for this post I wanted to share some of the learnings I had over the 40 specs I wrote as part of the process.

Start small

My first few specs took a lot of development cycles. I spent a lot of time in the /speckit.plan stage refining the research and approach I wanted to take. Then, when I let the AI implement the specs, it went off and did something I didn’t want it to do. So I would have to go back to an earlier step (usually the spec.md), refine the requirements, and update every other document. This takes a lot of time and context switching. I realized my user stories were too big. For example, my first spec covered creating the database file, defining a header, and making it append-only. This took a very long time to get right, and involved a lot of tuning of every step of the spec.

Sdd on sugar, spice, &terminal? nice

Spec.md

My first Spec-Driven Development project

Start small