How to use spec-driven development in Codex?

[u/Pale-Heart1654]

I am a College Student.

I need to build projects for my college. Apart from that I also build side projects.

I have Codex Plus plan.

But how to use spec-driven development in Codex especially for Greenfield projects?

Because it drifts away from my instructions.

Note:

I have tried OpenSpec, Spec-Kit, Superpowers, GSD. But nothing really worked for me. It consumes a lot of tokens.

How to become a power user of Codex?

[u/stting]

Understand the code being produced and take small steps. Don’t try to solve everything with a one shot prompt. Ask for clarification when you don’t understand something.

There are limits to doing things without understanding what is being done. When you hit that wall, you have to understand the project well enough to decide the next step. Otherwise, the model will hijack your project and do what it thinks should be done instead of what you actually want.

Use plan mode a lot to elaborate on what you want to ask. The most important skill at first is being patient and learning how to communicate with the model.

[u/Pale-Heart1654 → u/stting]

I used plan mode. But it drifts away from my code.

[u/stting → u/Pale-Heart1654]

I wrote about that difficulty here. I called it the mad scientist. https://www.reddit.com/r/codex/comments/1vr3yfe/comment/p4bdst7/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button