Open source, free, no login, nothing to sell. I'm not trying to build a business on this. I just want agents to write better code, and that only happens when they have something firmer than a chat prompt to work against. CLI is here: https://github.com/girishr/SpecPilot

It started as a TypeScript CLI in January. Enough people told me they either didn't want a CLI or didn't know how to use one that I rebuilt the front door as a guided chat: 27 questions, runs fully offline in the browser, outputs the .specs/ tree plus an onboarding prompt for your IDE.

Recently shipped an MCP server so the agent can run the questionnaire itself rather than the human doing it, published to the official MCP registry and Smithery. Next is brownfield: point it at an existing repo and backfill specs from the code. Honest state of things: the Product Hunt launch got 4 votes and around 100 visitors, and I had no event tracking wired up, so I couldn't even tell how many of those generated anything. Fixed since. Usage is small but real, and it's coming through MCP rather than the web app, which I did not expect.

The part I keep circling back to is that spec generation is easy to copy. Spec enforcement is where the value is: checking a diff against the spec and failing loudly. Feedback welcome, especially from anyone who tried SDD on an existing codebase and gave up.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49691109

Points: 15

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Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49681268

Points: 80

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I intentionally avoided OpenAPI / heavy spec formats. The goal was: - something devs actually write - easy to diff in PRs - flexible enough for non-API workflows too

If you’ve tried spec-first approaches before and bounced off them, I’d love to know what didn’t work for you.

I built SpecPilot to solve a problem I kept running into: spec-first development sounds great, but most tools are either too heavy or too rigid for day-to-day dev work.

SpecPilot is a small, open-source CLI that helps you: - define specs first (Markdown-based) - keep them versioned alongside code - scaffold projects and workflows from those specs

I built it for myself and my team, and decided to open-source it.

Website: https://specpilot.dev GitHub: https://github.com/girishr/SpecPilot

Would really appreciate feedback on: - whether this fits into your workflow - what feels unnecessary - what’s missing for real-world use

Happy to answer any questions.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46729734

Points: 1

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Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14183506

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Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14182784

Points: 2

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