Meir's Monthly Learning Article

This month I want to highlight a blog post, Spec Driven Development, by Mofi Rahman.

When vibe coding became a popularized term in early 2025, I struggled to reconcile how vibe coding could produce enterprise-quality results. I knew the answer was out there, but it wasn’t clear to me. In 2026, I now realize the industry has a solution for AI to create enterprise-quality software, and that solution is Spec Driven Development (SDD). The author of the linked article does a good job explaining SDD and points to some existing solutions.

I want to add to the SDD discussion because I believe SDD cleanly bridges the gap between AI generated code and enterprise-quality products. Bridging the gap is important to both driving AI adoption across an organization while also delivering products customers will continue to love.

What’s old is new again. First, an acknowledgement: SDD is a decades-old practice. Detailed specifications have always been a good idea, however agile development leaned towards building incrementally, which naturally gravitated towards removing upfront detail. AI is driving an SDD resurgence because we are collectively recognize that vibe coding is a frustrating bottleneck when trying to guide stochastic AI systems to produce high quality, secure code; it doesn’t inherently create enterprise-quality products.

What problem does SDD solve? SDD bridges the gap between vide coding and enterprise software. SDD provides a framework to create high quality, repeatable, secure outputs. Using SDD isn’t magic, you and AI can still perform poorly with poor specifications. It does, however, provide a framework with sufficient rigor to enable an enterprise org to freely use AI without the fear of producing an insecure, buggy product.

Not everything needs SDD. As an ex-engineer who continues to value quality, it is tempting to apply SDD to every solution. This would be a mistake. SDD is wonderful for enterprise outcomes, but it will also slow you down. Index for speed with prototypes and internal tools. Index for enterprise-quality when dealing with any system that interacts with the customer or drives the business forward (like the core product, or business insights tools). Being judicious with your SDD application will ensure you are fully supporting your business to be both nimble and secure.

Security and quality aren’t solved problems. Because SDD adds rigor to AI coding processes, it will naturally be slower than vibe coding. However, we the slower output supports increased security and quality. Look no farther than Anthropic’s CEO saying software engineers soon won’t code anymore (this is correct, btw) and Anthropic accidentally leaking their CLI source code. These two things are related, and act a sobering reminder that moving fast isn’t the only thing that matters. If the bleeding edge AI companies haven’t fully solved these problems, it’s safe to say that enterprise-quality is still a meaningful bar to hold for our products.

https://medium.com/google-cloud/spec-driven-development-54cdf7e0b088

“Code is no longer scarce; clarity of intent is the limiting factor.”