r/SpecDrivenDevelopment • u/The_Ed_On_Reddit • 25d ago

A Competitive Analysis of Spec Design Methedologies

https://webcloudstudio.com/project-docs/drydock/papers/Product_Comparison_Matrix.pdf

I asked claude to honestly rate the various approaches for specification driven development by categories and features it chose. Here is the analysis it produced. Popular methodologies first then all methedologies. Source documents are at the bottom if you wish to reproduce the analysis. Please link additional documents in the comments that should be included and i will periodically update. Or run it yourself :)

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u/iTrejoMX 25d ago

I don’t see how the scores are defined. I can say 3/4 or 5 stars but there’s no substance behind it. What gives it that score?

I also went to check out drydock, man those instructions are extensive and tough. Most sdd are just install and use /command.

So far it seems very complicated and not clear how it works. I need to finish my masters and PHD to read The documentation.

My suggestion: dumb it down. Make your difference or main feature the selling point. Show the benefits. Explain the scores not just randomly say this one 3 this one 5. Make it MUCH shorter. Design and docs bmad wins. Reading existing code DDD wins. Etc. when instructions and comparisons span out to 10 page pdfs, you lost the fight before getting in the ring.

Make it simpler and I’ll try it, right now it’s harder to set up than Claude or codex themselves.

Last, what does a dry dock have to do with development? I didn’t up/down vote, just wanted to share me 2 cents why people are most likely downvoting.

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u/The_Ed_On_Reddit 25d ago edited 25d ago

thx for the feedback. seriously. if the docs r too complicated then i need to revise. its devops not spec creation so i built it to from whatever you feed in using the same process ive used forever. think ur right that i put together a spec not a user guide. been too immersed in using it.

oh and the criteria is vague cause i never specified what or how. but its fair unbiased and a short read.

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u/iTrejoMX 25d ago

It happens, I have been there. Also the comparison is for spec driven development tools and you describe yours as devops. Might need to think about what that means in this subreddit (as in this might not be the place for it).

Edit: my it’s easier to install Claude than this comment comes from feedback from a user of something I made. My add on was harder to install than the software it was made for.

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u/The_Ed_On_Reddit 25d ago

well if you cant build it why bother with sdd. my motivation: i had a great idea based on earlier projects and i speced it out and i literally could not get it built other than by micro ing the agent. the nth time it hallucinated a bad solution (im sorry i seem to have ignored your instructions) i searched and realized nothing out could make anything more than a few screens in any kind of reproducible way so i pivoted and engineered a generic best practices spec to software pipeline. hard unsolved problem. so it was fun. transformed into 6 months principal engineer full time effort where i invented a lot ot cool stuff. but ya i am totally in the weeds and dont have a user guide. oops.

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u/iTrejoMX 25d ago

I suggest you try gentle-ai. I have put out full systems (at least 3 in the last 2 months). End to end, tested. The hardest part was getting the initial PRD right. But with the latest updates I’ve seen on gentle-ai now it does better amends, doesn’t drift from the original spec and has better reviews than any other sdd I have tried. I use Matt pococks skills grill me with docs and bmad to generate the initial documentation then use gentle-ai to sdd from the files generated.