spec-driven-dev

A gated workflow for building non-trivial software changes through specification, planning, implementation, testing, review, and release.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it for new projects, significant features, refactors, multi-file changes, architectural decisions, or unfinished work picked up from another session.
Why use it?
It reduces the risk of an AI coding agent starting before the requirements are clear or shipping changes that have not been verified and reviewed.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/lichamnesia/lich-skills/spec-driven-dev
Any agent
npx skills add LichAmnesia/lich-skills --skill spec-driven-dev
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/LichAmnesia/lich-skills

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 68 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 3,394 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00068 $0.03394
Opus 5 $0.00034 $0.01697
Sonnet 5 $0.00014 $0.00679
Haiku 4.5 $0.00007 $0.00339

Measured 2d ago against content hash 179fdc5441a4, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

spec-driven-dev scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 2d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

skills/spec-driven-dev/SKILL.md · 345 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 345 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Spec-Driven Development

A gated, six-phase workflow for shipping real software with an AI coding agent. Each phase has a goal, exit criteria, and a rationalization table for the excuses an agent will invent to skip it. Do not advance until the current gate is closed.

When to Use

  • Starting a new project, service, or significant feature
  • Requirements arrive as a paragraph, screenshot, or vague idea
  • The change touches more than one file or subsystem
  • You are about to make an architectural decision
  • An agent is about to write more than ~100 lines without a plan
  • Picking up half-finished work from another session

When NOT to Use

  • One-line typo or copy fix
  • Renaming a single local variable
  • Changes fully scoped by a one-line request where "done" is unambiguous
  • Pure dependency bumps with no behavior change
  • Throwaway spikes clearly marked as experiments and never merged

If unsure, do the spec phase anyway. A 10-minute spec is cheap insurance.

The Gated Workflow

  SPEC  ──▶  PLAN  ──▶  BUILD  ──▶  TEST  ──▶  REVIEW  ──▶  SHIP
   │          │          │          │          │           │
   ▼          ▼          ▼          ▼          ▼           ▼
 What &     Tasks &    Thin       Prove it   Five-axis   Deploy,
  why       order      slices     works      quality     observe,
                                   by test    gate       roll back
   │          │          │          │          │           │
   └──────────┴──────────┴──────────┴──────────┴───────────┘
            human or reviewer approves each gate

Rules of the gate:

  1. You may loop backward (Test reveals a broken spec — return to Spec).
  2. You may not skip forward. No building without a plan. No shipping without review.
  3. Each gate produces a named artifact committed to the repo: SPEC.md, PLAN.md, code + tests, a review note / PR description, a launch + rollback note.

Phase 1: SPEC

Goal. Turn a vague request into a written contract that answers what, why, for whom, and how we know it is done. Surface assumptions before they become bugs.

Read the full file on GitHub · 345 lines

Files

What ships with it

4 files beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 2d ago First seen · 345 lines · 68 tokens per session scan A 179fdc5441a4

Subscribe to this mod's changes

spec-driven-dev is a skill published in the GitHub repository LichAmnesia/lich-skills (233 stars, last pushed 2mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 68 tokens to every session and 3,394 once invoked, about $0.0003 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

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