Most people using AI coding tools fall into a "prompt and pray" cycle — you type a big prompt, Claude builds something, it's not quite right, you undo and retry. That cycle is chaotic, frustrating, and unpredictable. Spec-driven development replaces it with a methodical workflow: think, plan, build, verify. The key insight is that the traditional ratio of planning to building has completely flipped. Where we used to spend weeks building and hours planning, it's now 95% planning and 5% building — because the humans in the loop are no longer writing code, they're shaping the product through specs and architecture decisions.
This isn't just one person's opinion. Anthropic's own best practices documentation recommends the same explore-plan-code-commit workflow, and it's the core philosophy behind the open source Agent OS framework. Whether you call it a spec, a plan, or a PRD, the concept is the same: invest your time upfront defining what to build and how, then let your coding agent execute with clarity and confidence.
What's covered:
Training and community for developers and founders building with AI.
Created by Brian Casel (that's me) — multi-time founder, product designer, teacher, and the creator behind Builder Methods.
