spec-driven-development

spec-driven-development is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from magnus919/agent-skills. It costs 165 tokens per session (3,528 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A development process in which structured specifications guide AI-generated software through stages such as definition, breakdown, implementation, verification, and delivery. Each stage has a review gate before the next begins.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to design AI software factories, write testable specifications, decompose work, add review gates, and verify generated code before delivery.
Why use it?
It reduces ambiguity and catches missing requirements or defects earlier, before they spread into later implementation stages.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one. Also seen: mentions CLAUDE.md; mentions Claude Code; mentions AGENTS.md.

Good fit Use it to design AI software factories, write testable specifications, decompose work, add review gates, and verify generated code before delivery.

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Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/magnus919/agent-skills/spec-driven-development
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.

Any agent
npx skills add magnus919/agent-skills --skill spec-driven-development
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/magnus919/agent-skills

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Its marketplace also offers this one on its own, as the plugin spec-driven-development/plugin install spec-driven-development after adding the marketplace above.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for spec-driven-development

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/magnus919/agent-skills/spec-driven-development.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/magnus919/agent-skills/spec-driven-development)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/magnus919/agent-skills/spec-driven-development"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/magnus919/agent-skills/spec-driven-development.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 165 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 3,528 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe. Third-party audits
  • NVIDIA SkillSpector pass 7 Sept 2026
How audits are shown
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 5.1 $0.00165 $0.03528
Opus 5 $0.00082 $0.01764
Sonnet 5 $0.00033 $0.00706
Haiku 4.5 $0.00016 $0.00353

Measured 4d ago against content hash 7ec40a49b55d, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

spec-driven-development 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 4d ago.

The scan reads SKILL.md. This mod also ships 2 executable files (scripts/spec-quality-check.sh, scripts/spec-to-tasks.sh), listed below but not scanned — reading those needs a real analyzer, not pattern matching.

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.

spec-driven-development/SKILL.md · 214 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 214 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Spec-Driven Development for AI Software Factories

A methodology for building software where specifications are the executable input to an AI code generation pipeline. The factory model: specs are blueprints, AI agents are the assembly line, verification is quality control, and gates catch defects before they compound.

Pipeline Overview

INCEPTION → [SPECIFY] → REVIEW → [DECOMPOSE] → REVIEW → [IMPLEMENT] → REVIEW → [VERIFY] → DELIVER
                 ↑         ↑          ↑            ↑           ↑           ↑          ↑         ↓
            Phase 1    Gate 1    Phase 2       Gate 2    Phase 3      Gate 3    Phase 4   Gate 4

Each phase passes through a gate before the next begins. A defect caught at Gate 1 costs minutes to fix; the same defect found at Gate 4 costs hours.

SDD Core Principles

  1. Precision over clarity. A precise-but-dense spec is better than a readable-but-ambiguous one. The AI cannot ask for clarification — it implements one interpretation at random.
  2. Completeness over brevity. Every missing acceptance criterion is a missing feature. Specifying an edge case upfront costs minutes; discovering it in production costs hours or days.
  3. Testability over descriptiveness. An AC that cannot produce CLEAR PASS or CLEAR FAIL is not an AC — it's a hope.
  4. Gates catch defects early. A Gate 1 (spec review) fix costs minutes. A Gate 4 (acceptance review) fix costs hours — the entire implementation may need to be discarded.
  5. Spec is the single source of truth. Every downstream artifact traces back to the spec. Deviations are defects unless explicitly documented.
  6. Spec IS the test (when possible). Gherkin-style ACs serve double duty as test cases. No separate test writing required.

Loading Guide

Reference Load when File
SDD Overview & Philosophy You need to understand the why — the software factory metaphor, how SDD differs from traditional requirements, the core principle that specs are executable inputs not communication artifacts references/sdd-overview.md
The AI Factory Pipeline You need the full 5-phase pipeline with phase inputs, outputs, and transition rules — or you're designing a new pipeline from scratch references/ai-factory-pipeline.md
Spec Quality Gates You've written a SPEC.md and need to validate it before Gate 1 — the 7 gates that separate a good spec from a vague one references/spec-quality-gates.md
Phase Gate Methodology You're running a review gate (any of the 4) and need the decision criteria, verdict format, and escalation path references/phase-gate-methodology.md
Methodology Selection Matrix You're deciding which spec methodology (BDD, Formal, DbC, OpenAPI, ADRs) fits your context — when each applies and their AI-readiness ratings references/methodology-matrix.md
NFR Encoding for AI Specs You need to express non-functional requirements (performance, security, observability) in machine-readable format references/nfr-encoding.md
Format Translation You need to map between spec formats — Gherkin ↔ OpenAPI ↔ SPEC.md ↔ JSON Schema — or translate a human PRD into an AI-ready spec references/format-translation.md
Critiques & Tradeoffs You need to decide when not to use SDD — the honest limitations: spec bottleneck, GIGO, drift, over/under-specification, the formal methods tax references/critiques-and-tradeoffs.md
Worked Example — Complete SPEC.md You want to see a fully-realized specification to calibrate your output depth — shows proper AC format, edge case enumeration, NFR thresholds, data contracts, and assumptions for a password reset feature references/example-spec.md

Read the full file on GitHub · 214 lines

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. 4d ago First seen · 214 lines · 165 tokens per session scan A 7ec40a49b55d

Subscribe to this mod's changes

spec-driven-development is a skill published in the GitHub repository magnus919/agent-skills (74 stars, last pushed today), licensed MIT. It adds 165 tokens to every session and 3,528 once invoked, about $0.0008 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 2026-09-03.