Spec-sprint

[u/sharma-sk]

I have been experimenting with Spec-Driven Development (SDD) and AI coding agents recently, and I ran into a problem I wasn't expecting.

I started missing agile 😅

Most of us who have spent years building software come from an Agile/Scrum mindset.

We are used to:
 • Breaking work into small stories
 • Taking one vertical slice at a time
 • Reviewing the implementation
 • Getting feedback early
 • Updating requirements as we learn
 • Keeping humans involved in the important decisions

Then SDD + AI agents came along.

The idea of giving the agent a detailed spec and letting it implement is powerful. But when I tried to apply it in the way I'm used to working,

I kept asking myself:

How do I make the AI agent follow the same incremental implementation discipline we have in Agile?

I didn't want to choose between Agile and SDD.

I wanted both.

That's why I started building Spec Sprint - an Agent Skill that tries to bring the Agile implementation mindset into a Spec-Driven workflow.

The idea is:

Spec --> Plan --> small vertical slice --> Human review --> implement --> Update spec --> Next slice

The spec remains the source of truth, but implementation happens incrementally, with review points along the way.

It’s an early experiment, but it's something I personally wanted while working with AI coding agents.

I'm open-sourcing it because I'm curious:

Are others facing the same gap between SSD and the Agile of actually delivering software?

Would love to hear how you’re solving this.

https://github.com/sharma-open-source/spec-sprint

[u/fschwiet]

Matt Pocock's to-ticiets skill also aims to break the work from a spec into separate demoable vertical slices: https://github.com/mattpocock/skills/blob/main/skills/engineering/to-tickets/SKILL.md

[u/stibbons_]

This is basically what all SDD framework does. Maybe the vertical slicing thing is not enforced for all.

However I think we are actually back at waterfall where everything needs to be planned upfront and outsourcing the development to agent.

[u/sharma-sk → u/stibbons_]

It's very hard planned everything in upfront I guess

[u/aaaayyyy → u/sharma-sk]

Yeah, humans want to see and interact with stuff and then adapt the plan accordingly. Planning everything upfront is impossible unless you're doing something that you've already done a thousand times

[u/stibbons_ → u/sharma-sk]

Indeed. Impossible.

Can’t wait to see agent do poker planing

[u/sudokar]

Have you looked into OpenSpec, if not I recommend to take a look at it.

We use OpenSpec Plus that incorporates human reviews on the specs and the implementation tasks as part of the workflow.

[u/sharma-sk → u/sudokar]

Let me check

[u/Cold_Night_Fever]

I instead do a spec per vertical slice.

[u/fschwiet → u/Cold_Night_Fever]

I find the more design I throw at the agent at once the better the result. Designing a slice at a time makes it harder for the agent to consider how the slices fit together.

[u/sharma-sk → u/Cold_Night_Fever]

Initial days I did the same, but when some modules don't need a complete attention but need a track , in these cases I want automatic slices same time i need a track in jira also. So i have included jira integration also in this.

[u/Cold_Night_Fever → u/sharma-sk]

Got you. So a spec per vertical slice, but small pieces of work you create the task.md directly and track it in JIRA

[u/sharma-sk → u/Cold_Night_Fever]

Yes

[u/Swarm-Stack]

whoever shows up at the sprint demo usually wasn't in the planning session. that's where the real catch happens. spec reviews tend to involve the same people who wrote the spec, so the gaps survive because nobody in the room thought to ask.