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The Method That Replaces Spec-Driven Development — IDSD
I have been saying Spec-Driven Development is a problem, and why. This is the first time I show the fix, and it ends somewhere the saying-so never did, on the client’s invoice.
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SDD took shape because vibe coding wasn’t working out. You described a goal, you got a block of code back, it looked right, but it didn’t quite work. GitHub said this themselves when they shipped spec-kit in September 2025: models are “exceptional at pattern completion, but not at mind reading.” The reach was for the spec. Write down what you want, in detail, up front, and the agent stops guessing. Someone wrote a few commands, GitHub being GitHub, spec-kit took over the conversation, and a dozen others arrived behind it: Kiro from AWS, Tessl, BMAD, Agent OS. The category went mainstream in under a year.
One correction, because careful readers will check. Spec-driven development is not new, and the people who looked closely said so a long time ago. Larman and Basili documented in IEEE Computer in 2003 that iterative development goes back to the 1950s, and the single-pass, document-driven ideal was doubted from the start, even by Royce, the man usually…
