Using Spec-Driven Development for Production Workflows - Erik Hanchett, AWS

Spec-driven development makes an intended change reviewable before an AI assistant implements it. The workflow described in this talk turns a request into requirements, a design and an implementation task list, with the developer examining and correcting the documents along the way.

That review is the mechanism: missing requirements or mistaken design choices can be addressed while they are still explicit proposals. The speaker recommends selecting a small working version from the task list first, so the developer can inspect something usable before completing the rest. The speaker presents this approach as particularly useful for complex features, including work in existing applications.

“Because if you give them just a little bit of of leeway, they will go off the rails.”

Erik Hanchett

“you are the human in the loop, so to speak. You need to be the code reviewer of all the code that's generated through this process.”

Erik Hanchett

“at the end of the day, if something goes wrong, you are the person that are going to be blamed for it, not the agent”

Erik Hanchett

“Kind of like that Goldilocks zone of information is what you need.”

Erik Hanchett

“I really think MCP is still maturing. There's a lot uh a long road ahead for it, especially with some of the security stuff it's doing.”

Erik Hanchett