brownfield-onboarding

To onboard an existing Spring Boot codebase into a spec-driven workflow, you need to establish a baseline, apply ratchet rules, and generate a starter design doc reflecting the current architecture without blocking day-one development.

A baseline harness in spec-driven software engineering captures the current state of an existing codebase to establish a _baseline.json, enabling ratchet rules that prevent code quality from degrading while allowing incremental improvements.

Yes, you can generate a starter design doc for an existing Spring project lacking a .specs folder by running detection scripts that analyze the current architecture and document known debt to establish a spec-driven workflow.

The best way to document technical debt when adopting spec-driven development is to generate a known-debt plan alongside a starter design doc, capturing existing architectural gaps to ensure the repository can deliver changes with minimal blocking.

Yes, ratchet rules are required to baseline an existing codebase because they enforce the spec-driven workflow by preventing current architectural gaps from expanding while the team gradually addresses the documented known-debt plan.

Spec-driven onboarding requires detection scripts for a Spring Boot repo to automatically identify the current technology stack, wire harness baselines, and produce an accurate starter design doc reflecting what the code actually looks like.