Most developers have now felt both sides of AI-assisted coding: the rush of a demo built in twenty minutes, and the dread of opening that same codebase two weeks later. Spec-driven development is the workflow that bridges those two moments — and the only way to really learn it is to do it.
This is a hands-on workshop, not a lecture. We'll start with a small, deliberately messy vibe-coded app — the kind of thing every attendee has written at least once. Together, we'll diagnose what's actually wrong with it: not the syntax, but the assumptions the agent silently made when nobody told it what "done" meant.
Then you'll write a spec. A real one, using GitHub Spec Kit, with the six elements that separate a spec from a wish: outcomes, scope boundaries, constraints, prior decisions, task breakdown, and verification criteria. We'll walk through each element together, then you'll apply it to the workshop app in your own environment. I'll be circulating to help when the spec fights back — which it will, because writing a spec forces the decisions vibe coding lets you postpone.
With the spec in hand, you'll hand it to your AI coding agent and watch it regenerate the feature. We'll compare what came out against what you vibed into existence an hour earlier. The differences are the lesson.
By the end of the session, you'll have a working spec, a regenerated app, and — more importantly — a workflow you can take back to your own codebase on Monday.

* Prerequisites (attendees should arrive with)
- A laptop with Node.js and Git installed
- An AI coding agent of their choice already set up: GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Claude Code, or any Spec Kit–compatible agent
- A working familiarity with one programming language (the workshop will use TypeScript, but the patterns are language-agnostic)
- Optional: GitHub Spec Kit pre-installed (we'll cover installation, but starting with it ready saves ten minutes)

A setup guide will be shared one week before the event.

* Key Takeaways
- Hands-on experience writing a spec that an AI agent can actually execute against
- Working knowledge of GitHub Spec Kit's core workflow: specify, plan, tasks, implement
- A real diagnostic skill — learning to spot the moments where an agent is about to "answer for you"
- A reusable spec template you can apply to your own projects immediately
- A clear sense of when spec-driven development is worth the upfront cost and when iterative prompting is still the right call

* Level: Intermediate
* Format: Hands-on Workshop, 90 minutes
* Prerequisites (attendees should arrive with)
- A laptop with Node.js and Git installed
- An AI coding agent of their choice already set up: GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Claude Code, or any Spec Kit–compatible agent
- A working familiarity with one programming language (the workshop will use TypeScript, but the patterns are language-agnostic)
- Optional: GitHub Spec Kit pre-installed (we'll cover installation, but starting with it ready saves ten minutes)

A setup guide will be shared one week before the event.