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Spec-Driven Development: OpenSpec

OpenSpec Workflow Diagram with source of truth specification

In one of my previous articles I mentioned that I have been experimenting with several Spec-Driven Development (SDD) tools, both to evaluate them and to use them in my own work. Among these, OpenSpec has increasingly become one of my preferred SDD tools. It introduces an interesting idea of having a single top level “source of truth” spec. In this article I will look at the workflow, advantages of the “source of truth” spec and other observations about OpenSpec.

OpenSpec — Change Workflow

OpenSpec Change Workflow • harikrishnan.io • CC BY 4.0 • https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Why the “Source of Truth” Spec Matters?

To understand its importance, it helps to reflect on some of the difficulties I faced with tools like Spec-Kit and Kiro in this context.

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Without a top-level spec, feature-level specs are often fragmented across subfolders within the “specs” directory. This fragmentation introduces below issues:

1. Fragmented Understanding — The overall intent of the system becomes scattered across multiple files, making it difficult to maintain a cohesive picture.
2. Evolving specs — There are several questions and confusions that seem to arise in the context of spec evolution which has been well discussed here — Evolving specs #152.
3. Unintended Interactions — Every new feature added risks unintentionally affecting existing behaviour, since there is no unified view for validation. (I had attempted to address this to an extent with an optional “/cross-feature” command to analyse across features).

Originally published on intent-driven.dev.