Spec-Driven Development with GitHub Spec Kit

Class Duration

7 hours of live training delivered over 1-2 days to accommodate your scheduling needs.

Student Prerequisites

Professional software development experience
Working familiarity with at least one AI coding assistant (Copilot, Claude Code, Cursor, or Windsurf)
Comfort with the command line and Git

Target Audience

Software engineers, tech leads, and platform engineers who want a disciplined, agent-friendly workflow that produces specifications first and code second. Equally relevant for teams shipping AI-generated code at scale who need a structured process for grounding agents, and for organizations rolling out spec-driven development as a team standard.

Description

Most AI coding workflows start with a prompt and hope for the best. Spec-driven development inverts that: the specification becomes the primary artifact and the source of truth, and code is what the agent produces from it. GitHub Spec Kit is the open-source toolkit that operationalizes this discipline—a CLI (specify) and a four-phase workflow (specify → plan → tasks → implement) with broad agent compatibility including GitHub Copilot, Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, Gemini CLI, and OpenAI Codex. This course teaches the methodology and the tool: writing specifications that agents can actually act on, decomposing plans into reviewable tasks, driving each implementation phase with the agent of your choice, and integrating the workflow into a real engineering process with reviews and CI.

Learning Outcomes

Explain spec-driven development and how it changes the relationship between human, specification, and AI agent.
Install and configure Spec Kit (specify CLI) for a project and select the right agent template.
Write specifications that capture intent, acceptance criteria, and constraints precisely enough for an agent to execute against.
Run the four-phase workflow—specify, plan, tasks, implement—end-to-end on a realistic feature.
Use Spec Kit's project constitution to encode persistent rules and architectural constraints.
Integrate Spec Kit with GitHub Copilot, Claude Code, Cursor, and Windsurf and choose the right agent per phase.
Apply review discipline at the spec, plan, and task levels—not just on generated code.
Wire Spec Kit phases into CI and PR workflows for spec-as-source-of-truth pipelines.

Training Materials

Comprehensive courseware is distributed online at the start of class. All students receive a downloadable MP4 recording of the training.

Software Requirements

The Spec Kit specify CLI installed, Git, an active subscription or API key for at least one supported agent (GitHub Copilot, Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, or Gemini CLI), and a sample repository for labs.

Training Topics

Spec-Driven Development Principles

Why prompt-first workflows produce inconsistent code at scale
Specifications as durable contracts vs. one-shot prompts
The four-phase mental model: specify → plan → tasks → implement
Where spec-driven sits relative to TDD, BDD, and ADRs

Spec Kit Setup and Architecture

Installing the specify CLI
Project initialization and template selection
The .specify/ directory and what each file does
Choosing an agent template: Copilot, Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, Gemini CLI
Anatomy of a Spec Kit project on disk

Writing Effective Specifications

The specify command and prompt patterns that produce useful specs
Acceptance criteria, constraints, and out-of-scope sections
Domain-specific vocabulary in specs
Reviewing and iterating on a spec before moving to plan
Anti-patterns: vague specs, implementation-leaking specs

The Project Constitution

What goes in constitution.md vs. an individual spec
Architectural rules, style conventions, library choices
How the constitution constrains every downstream phase
Versioning and maintaining the constitution alongside code

Plan, Tasks, and Implement Phases

The plan phase: turning a spec into a technical approach
The tasks phase: decomposing the plan into reviewable units
The implement phase: agent-driven code generation against tasks
Iteration patterns when an agent goes off-track
When to revise the spec vs. the plan vs. the implementation

Agent Integration in Practice

Copilot in Spec Kit: chat modes, prompt files, and Spaces
Claude Code in Spec Kit: CLAUDE.md alignment with the constitution
Cursor and Windsurf in Spec Kit: rules files vs. spec source-of-truth
Switching agents mid-project and what's portable
Side-by-side comparative lab on a single spec

Review Discipline at Every Phase

Reviewing specs as carefully as code
Plan review: catching scope creep before implementation
Task-level review and acceptance gates
Code review with the spec open for reference

CI and Workflow Integration

Spec Kit phases in pull request workflows
Spec drift detection between code and spec.md
Branch and PR conventions for spec-driven work
Metrics: spec-to-implementation accuracy, rework rate

Workshop

End-to-end Spec Kit lab: build a feature using all four phases
Cross-agent comparison: same spec, two agents, compare outputs
Q&A session