"Marc describes the process of developing an application by writing specifications, which outline what a program should do and what needs it should meet. We dig into a bit of computer science history to explore the differences between declarative and imperative programming. We also discuss Kiro, a new integrated development environment from Amazon, built around turning prompts into structured requirements. We examine the various types of documents used to specify tasks, requirements, design, and steering."
"00:07:23 - How would you describe spec-driven development? 00:10:49 - Balancing the desire to start coding with defining the project 00:13:06 - What does this documentation look like? 00:18:27 - Declarative vs imperative programming 00:24:13 - Infrastructure as part of the design 00:27:03 - Getting started with a small project 00:29:05 - Committing the spec files along with the code 00:31:08 - What is steering? 00:34:17 - How to get better at distilling specifications?"
Specification-driven development starts by writing formal specifications that describe program behavior, requirements, and acceptance criteria before implementation. Specifications serve as executable or checkable artifacts that guide design, testing, and infrastructure decisions and remain versioned alongside code. This approach reduces ambiguity, improves reproducibility, and enables clearer steering of AI-assisted code generation. Declarative programming and infrastructure-as-code concepts align with specification-driven practices by emphasizing desired outcomes over step-by-step commands. Tooling such as Kiro aims to convert prompts into structured requirements and documents to support task definition, anti-pattern avoidance, and iterative refinement of small, testable projects.
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