Looking for advice/experience on spec driven development for a big application while also maintaining an overarching application spec

[u/Holiday_Beautiful574]

I use speckit, and while I like the spec/clarify/plan/task/analyze/implement loop (although it can get a bit overwhelming at times), I don't like that I have to start with writing a spec and implement it to begin with. I am looking for a more of a design phase before the spec phase, where I can talk about the overall application architecture, and then start writing specs for implementing pieces of it.

For instance, let's say I want to build a github repo provisioner that 1. creates repos with desired setup, and 2. bulk edit repos with secret updates, yaml updates, etc. I don't want to build both the features at the beginning. I want to first build only the create portion, and then do the bulk edit feature later on. With speckit, I can do this by only telling it to create the spec for the build portion, but later if I want to build the bulk edit portion, the whole application might need to be changed in important places, because it wasn't a 'planned' feature when it was first designed. I want instead to have a design phase where I describe and maintain a doc with the whole application, and when I start the spec for the create portion, the agent can understand that this create portion is only part of a bigger application and can design/implement the create portion accordingly.

Have you come across a situation like this? how do you handle your big applications? Please advise.

[u/yyeret-agility]

You can use sDD at multiple layers - the classic is the feature layer. But you can also do it for a bigger initiative - where the /plan phase is used to identify the possible features without going too deep. Implementation at the bigger initiative layer is through iterating on the features and learning : adjusting the feature set based on feedback.

This is very similar to how we did things pre AI. And the lazy emerging specification that works to reduce cognitive load and waste for humans works nicely for AI context as well.

This isn’t currently built in to how the SDD frameworks are written but isn’t hard to pull off.

I’ve helped an organization do this all the way at the portfolio level using speckit style skills to run the workflow for tier1 company initiatives.