spec-driven-development

Spec-driven development aligns software work with formal SPEC.md artifacts before coding, ensuring scoped expectations and verifiable outcomes. It gates research, validation, review, and implementation phases within a single repository to scale from small features to complex capabilities.

You validate a SPEC.md file by running the spec-driven validation workflow to check frontmatter structure and manage outbound call linking. This integrated tooling ensures your spec graph remains valid and provides diagrammatic insight into the artifact relationships.

Yes, spec-driven development explicitly supports RESEARCH.md and CONTRACT.md artifacts alongside the core SPEC.md. These documents integrate into the unified artifact workflow to provide comprehensive gating across research, validation, review, and implementation stages.

Yes, you can use this spec-driven workflow for both small features and complex capabilities. The unified artifact workflow scales across a single repository, applying formal validation gates and spec graph diagramming to any project size.

Yes, you need pyyaml and jsonschema installed to run SPEC.md frontmatter validation. These dependencies power the integrated tooling that validates the spec graph structure, outbound links, and artifact frontmatter within the development workflow.

The best way to start a spec-driven review cycle is to draft a SPEC.md file and run the SDD validation workflow. This initiates the gating process across research, validation, review, and implementation using the unified artifact structure.