I am glad to share that an excerpt from my book, Spec-Driven Development: Engineering with Intent, is featured in u/ManningBooks’s new free ebook, Spec-Driven AI Development.

And it is completely free. If you are exploring Spec-Driven Development or looking to adopt AI-native software engineering, this is a great place to start.

A bit of a back-to-back post from me today. However, I wanted to share it anyway, as it may be most relevant to this community. Thanks again for all the support so far.

Here is a complete walkthrough of Intent-Driven Template, my customized OpenSpec setup with OpenCode for spec-driven development using Architecture Decision Records (ADRs), BDD, TDD, Multi-Model Adversarial Spec Authoring, a glossary of domain and technical terms, git commit discipline skills, and reusable engineering workflows. This also makes OpenSpec spec-as-source capable using BDD and acceptance tests. GitHub: https://github.com/intent-driven-dev/intent-driven-template. I would love to hear your thoughts and feedback.

Many of you who are regulars here probably know me from the discussions we have had around Spec-Driven Development and also a maintainer (technical direction advisor) of OpenSpec. I am excited to share something I have been working on for a while.

My book, “Spec-Driven Development: Engineering with Intent,” is now live on u/ManningBooks MEAP.

https://hubs.la/Q04vMvjf0

The first three chapters are live, and there is a 50% off sitewide sale running from Aug 31 to Sept 14 on manning.com.

The book covers how we can close the gap between our ideas and AI agent-generated implementations by articulating our intent clearly, using approaches including Spec-Driven Development, Ralph Loops, and more. While seeing a coding agent generate a prototype from a single-line prompt may be impressive, getting a coding agent to deliver production-ready software is a completely different ball game. In the book, we look at what it takes to engineer context effectively for coding agents so that they are not constantly bottlenecked on us, yet deliver software that is aligned with what we want. Software engineering is ultimately about how we collaborate as a team, and this book looks at coding agents as members of the team at our table rather than just tools on the desk.

One of the advantages of MEAP is that you get to read the book as I write it. Since many of you here are actively exploring and practicing SDD, I would really value your thoughts and feedback. It can help shape the book as it evolves.

In this video I talk about how Test-Driven Development (TDD) and Behavior-Driven Development (BDD) actually fit Into Spec-Driven Development (SDD). BDD helps with macro level alignment and TDD helps keep the internal implementation details de-coupled and clean. I also cover how agents reward hack TDD and how to prevent them.

UPDATE: Link to my earlier post about "Behavior-Driven Development and Spec-Driven Development with OpenSpec" https://www.reddit.com/r/SpecDrivenDevelopment/s/d3VE4pOtqg

Experimenting with Behavior-Driven Development (BDD) and SDD in OpenSpec to achieve a strict Spec-as-Source workflow.

In this walkthrough, I capture the spec in Gherkin format, which the agent first translates into acceptance tests, driving the coding agent to generate the implementation. The harness prevents direct modifications to the code without going through the spec and encourages starting with the spec, using techniques such as Claude Code hooks. Would love to hear your thoughts and feedback.

This is a follow-up to my earlier post about "Spec-Driven Development with OpenSpec and OpenCode": https://www.reddit.com/r/SpecDrivenDevelopment/s/jLn7MWYwcj. In this video I cover multi-model adversarial authoring of Specifications with one sub-agent authoring, another reviewing to reduce bias before human review. Also glossary skills where terminology defined once, reused everywhere to improve consistency and quality of specifications. Thanks.

In this video I go over integrating your product backlog with spec-driven development workflow to allow picking up issues or tasks from tools such as Linear. A common question that comes up with teams that are trying to adopt SDD is what role does my backlog plays, how do I coordinate with my product owners and business stakeholders who may want to continue using the board. This is an attempt to give a middle path to allow teams to try out SDD without having to force product owners to also look code repo for product specs.

My OpenCode + OpenSpec setup for Spec-Driven Development with skills for git commit discipline, interviewing during proposal creation using grill-me, C4 Diagrams during design, Architectural Decision Records for durable technical choices and Custom OpenSpec Schema to bring this all together. Thanks.