SpecKit has 77,000 GitHub stars. AWS built an entire IDE around spec-driven development. Tessl raised $125 million on the promise that specs, not code, should be the source of truth.

The pitch was clean: stop vibe coding, write a proper specification, let the agent execute against it. Engineers loved it. It felt like rigor. It felt like the adults had finally entered the room.

Then someone actually tested it on a real project. Ten times slower. More ceremony. Same bugs.

The industry built an entire ecosystem around one idea: if we give AI agents a detailed enough spec, they’ll produce working software. It’s the same bet the industry made with outsourcing, with offshoring, with every model that tries to replace understanding with documentation. Write it down clearly enough and someone (or something) on the other side will execute it perfectly. —  Read More