So I have been learning more and more about GitHub Spec-Kit. I’m trying to like it, and I have good reasons for liking it:
- It’s lightweight. Once I install it in my project folder, I can customize prompts and templates. They are small.
- It comes from GitHub/Microsoft. This should not matter much but, hey, there is some respect for these guys.
I even watched a few videos in YouTube from one of the creators. They helped me understand a bit better how it works, however…
There is something I am not sure about. There is some cleverness in the way everything is tied together. I like how Bash scripts are used to set up folders, create branch, etc. I also like how the context is engineered for 3 phases (specify, plan, tasks), and yet there is something I’m not convinced about.
It’s not the constitution.md file. I knew I wouldn’t like that from the beginning but I understand the role it plays.
It must be the templates. I have mixed feelings when I see how the prompt instructions for the context engineering are in the same place as my requirements.
And the real test has been to vibe code a project using spec-driven development, and it is not going well so far. In the YouTube videos, the author shows something that looks like a one-shot kind of thing. It creates the spec for the whole project, accepts the defaults of the plan and tasks, then he instructs the AI to implement the project. Finally, he shows a really good implementation which makes anyone think that Spec-Kit truly works. In my case, it’s disappointing so far.