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Spec-Driven Development Frameworks a Year Later: Pattern Families, Measurements and a Choice Matrix
Four pattern families instead of fifteen products, and a choice matrix: bug fix, brownfield feature, cross-component change
A year ago this space had fifteen contenders, and each promised that its workflow would tame the coding agent. A year later no product has won — four working patterns have pulled ahead, and the tools have started borrowing each other’s missing pieces. If your team is choosing a spec framework right now, this has a practical consequence: in the only public per-change-type measurement I could find, four frameworks landed within the noise band on merged tickets at first delivery.
Spec Kit shipped 1.0.0 without promising maturity, vendors built dedicated paths for bug fixes, and spec-as-source retreated. The biggest unknown remains keeping a spec up to date through later changes: the mechanisms and risks are documented, but in the studies I found nobody has compared their cost. By the end you’ll have a choice matrix by type of change — bug fix, feature in an existing codebase, change across several components — marking what someone measured and what documentation merely promises.
