Live Course: Spec-Driven Development Frameworks Compared

Writing a spec before a coding agent writes code works well as a personal habit. The moment a second engineer joins, the spec format becomes a team problem: where specs live, which sections are required, who approves the plan, and where tasks come from. Spec-driven development frameworks answer these questions with a fixed file layout, a set of commands and named review points.

In this live course on the O'Reilly platform I compare the three most popular frameworks: GitHub Spec Kit, OpenSpec and BMAD Method. We look at the folders each one creates, the commands it adds, the documents it produces and the kind of work it was built for. Then we work through the choice itself: greenfield or brownfield, how much process a team will really follow, and which agents the team already uses.

We close with spec drift, the place where spec-driven development most often breaks in practice, and what each framework gives you to catch it.