If specifications solved problems and were perfectly implemented by or
, the waterfall model would still be king like IBM. Specs don't solve problems. Specs encode someone's hopes and dreams to change reality — which fights back when it disagrees.
Instead, observations and problem-solving lead one to understand reality as it is today and how it can be structurally transformed in a reliable way with research and development. A specification merely documents the combination of its desired end state and approximately the bounds of how it should be achieved through applied knowledge and constraints found through observation, research, and development.
"How would you do it?" — a plan — is quite different from "How did you do it?" — a specification.
For anyone that's done project management, development, and implementation, we all know that plans only exist to document context in one place so that stake-holders can confirm it is aligned with their vision, the resources that will be spent is acceptable, and the facts and constraints of the world around its future implementation are grounded. Even with all that preparation, a plan is speculative.
To reinforce the plan, we've devised this thing called a Project Requirements Document (PRD) that focuses less on the "how" and more on the "what" and "why." It is easier for an implementor to stay aligned and make faithful deviations from a flawed plan when a PRD asserts the context on what the objective is.
There's a good reason why PRDs, standards, and specs exist. They keep independent entities ( ,
,
) aligned while their underlying implementations differ. However, their reputation in agentic coding is exaggerated.
Common Ground & Definitions
Before I criticize the opinions and untruths disseminated by social media and the inconsistent meaning behind terminology, take a read through The State of Large Language Models in Q2 2026.
I've used agentic harnesses, including Cursor IDE, its
agent CLI, as well as Claude Code . They generate useful greenfield applications and tools. With the latest thinking models (Opus 4.6, Composer 2), these agentic coding tools are able to modify brownfield applications with very targeted instructions without catastrophically failing.
Agentic coding harnesses like Cursor's IDE and Claude Code are capable products. I've used them to generate useful greenfield applications and tools.
The story they tell
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