What problem does it solve?
This Skill translates product and feature requirements (the WHAT) into a complete, implementable technical design (the HOW), ensuring requirement traceability, clear boundaries, and architecture-ready artifacts for engineering teams. It reduces ambiguity, enforces type-safety and review gates, and captures discovery rationale so designs are reviewable and actionable.
Core Features & Use Cases
- Discovery workflows: Runs full, light, or minimal discovery processes, including external research, codebase analysis, and risk assessment, to inform architecture decisions.
- Synthesis & Design Drafting: Applies boundary-first principles, produces File Structure Plans, component contracts, test strategies, and mermaid diagrams as needed.
- Governance & Outputs: Enforces requirements traceability, review-gate checks, updates research.md, and writes .kiro/specs/{feature}/design.md once readiness is confirmed.
- Use Cases: Creating architecture for a greenfield feature, designing an extension that integrates with existing services, or drafting a tight CRUD/UI addition with minimal discovery.
Quick Start
Run /kiro-spec-design <feature> to generate a draft design and update the research log after confirming the requirements are present and approved.