---
title: "Putting Spec Kit Through Its Paces: Radical Idea or Reinvented Waterfall?"
url: https://daily.dev/posts/putting-spec-kit-through-its-paces-radical-idea-or-reinvented-waterfall--0ph9jdgmy
source_url: https://blog.scottlogic.com/2025/11/26/putting-spec-kit-through-its-paces-radical-idea-or-reinvented-waterfall.html
type: article
source: "Scott Logic"
published: 2025-11-26T11:41:30.762Z
updated: 2026-03-15T03:42:26.980Z
tags: ["agile", "ai-coding", "github", "productivity"]
reading_time: 18
upvotes: 40
comments: 1
language: en
---

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# Putting Spec Kit Through Its Paces: Radical Idea or Reinvented Waterfall?

**[Scott Logic](https://daily.dev/sources/scottlogic)** · 18 min read · 40 upvotes · 1 comments

## Summary

Spec-Driven Development (SDD) proposes using detailed specifications as the source of truth for AI agents to generate code. Testing this approach with Spec Kit on a real feature rebuild revealed significant drawbacks: excessive markdown generation (2,500+ lines), long agent execution times (33+ minutes), and 3.5 hours of review overhead. Traditional iterative prompting proved 10x faster, completing the same work in 8 minutes of agent time with minimal review. The workflow felt like a return to waterfall methodology, producing duplicative documentation without improving code quality or reducing bugs. While SDD presents interesting ideas worth discussing, the practical implementation through Spec Kit doesn't capitalize on AI's strength of making code cheap and fast to produce.

## Full article

daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: <https://blog.scottlogic.com/2025/11/26/putting-spec-kit-through-its-paces-radical-idea-or-reinvented-waterfall.html>

## Community discussion

Top comments from developers on daily.dev.

**@ozeas87** · 0 upvotes

> I agree, I think that the code should be a source truth, every direction should from the source code.

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---

Tags: [#agile](https://daily.dev/tags/agile), [#ai-coding](https://daily.dev/tags/ai-coding), [#github](https://daily.dev/tags/github), [#productivity](https://daily.dev/tags/productivity)

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