Thread

1. open-paren · 1789615155 · focus · HN ↗

   my org at work adopted openspec, and i strongly dislike it. every change, medium or larger, turns into a large set of multiple markdown documents, each that need review. and they are never handwritten - always slop, filled with the all the tells of ai writing, which i personally find grating.

   i find a small, human written spec to be much more effective than these large spec documents.

   the idea is that you iterate with your agent to write the spec, you implement, then eventually that spec gets merged into a "spec corpus" that describes all the behavior of the repository. but i don't think that prose can ever enumerate all the behaviors required of code, nor should it. the spec almost immediately becomes out of date.

   1. nonethewiser · 1789616218 · focus · HN ↗

      Trying to impose this kind of structure on the agent workflow creates more work and decreases quality. It's an illusion of control.
   2. TabishB · 1789624602 · focus · HN ↗

      Yeah I agree that if no thought or effort is put into the spec, it can turn into unreadable slop. We see a wide spectrum of specs, some more thought out than others. While quality(and readability!) of spec will still largely be on humans, there's things we want to do to improve this experience. We'll be updating the experience not too far away to make things a lot more succinct and iterative.

      Either ways, we're open to feedback and I'm happy to have a conversation. Feel free to email me at tabish@openspec.dev to set something up.

   3. QwenGlazer9000 · 1789647610 · focus · HN ↗

      My org also adopted openspec, massive downgrade in workflow. Every change is so much more tedious now.

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