Spec-driven development for AI agents

I keep meeting young developers who are frustrated with AI coding tools. The output is inconsistent, the context is missing, and fixing the first draft takes longer than writing it themselves. The common diagnosis is that the model is bad. I don't think that's it.

The real problem is the spec, and most developers skip writing one entirely.

In this episode, I break down spec-driven development: what it is, why it's gaining serious traction in engineering teams right now, and how companies like GitHub and AWS are building entire tooling ecosystems around it. I also talk about the difference between a Jira ticket, a plan, and an actual spec, because they are not the same thing.

And I walk through grill-me, a Claude Code skill that replaces cold spec-writing with a structured conversation. It's one of the most practical changes I've made to my workflow, and I share a real example of what that session looks like in practice.

If you've been getting inconsistent output from AI coding agents, this episode is worth your time.

If you prefer reading, I've also published this entire episode on my substack

Substack link - https://swapniltalekar.substack.com/p/why-better-prompts-wont-fix-your?r=1v4ea