Spec-Kit violates its own philosophy?

[pks1989]

First of all, I want to express my respect — I really liked the methodology of Spec Driven Development.
I find the idea logical — that with the rise of AI, the level of abstraction will increase, and code will become what bytecode or machine code is today: a generated artifact nobody looks at. It’s a beautiful idea, and I like it.

In the official approach. It says things like:

Debugging means fixing specifications and their implementation plans that generate incorrect code

Maintaining software means evolving specifications.

But I’ve been integrating speckit into my project for a couple of weeks now, and I noticed the following:

• Nowhere in the prompts or scripts are there commands or instructions that make spec-kit actually look at the existing spec (besides picking a feature number).
• For every new task, speckit creates a new feature, without trying to find and evolve the right one.

So despite the declared approach, the SOURCE OF TRUTH IS STILL THE CODE.

I don’t want to offend anyone, I really appreciate the work that’s been done, but this gap is kind of disorienting to me.

@localden Please tell, is this difference between the philosophy and the actual behavior just temporary, or is it a planned part of the concept?

[gabriel-montrose]

I think it depends on workflow. For Greenfield it could be, for bugfixes not. This approach has 4-cycle approach dediceted more for management team nither for role-specific(dev, qa)

[pks1989]

I think it depends on workflow. For Greenfield it could be, for bugfixes not. This approach has 4-cycle approach dediceted more for management team nither for role-specific(dev, qa)

I don't agree, "in theory" this approach covers the entire development. Plan and clarify its a analytics part plan-tasks-implement its a dev part.

An SSD can work great in both greenfield and brownfield projects, in theory. But without checking previous specifications when creating a new specification, this is not Spec Driven Development, it’s just set of good prompts + one more doc.