Dev Interrupted How spec-driven development is changing the rules | AWS’ Amit Patel
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Nov 11, 2025 Amit Patel, Director of Software Development for Kiro at AWS, delves into the transformative power of spec-driven development. He explains how this structured approach helps maintain context in complex AI projects, unlike traditional 'vibe coding.' Learn how Kiro was built rapidly through user feedback and iterative design, allowing teams to complete tasks in days instead of weeks. Amit also emphasizes the importance of balancing structure with flexibility, creating an accessible development environment, and using Kiro to enhance team collaboration.
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Why Chat Prompts Fail At Scale
- Prompting in ephemeral chat windows fails for multi-day, complex engineering work due to lost context and memory limits.
- Spec-driven development provides a persistent structured plan that keeps long-term context alive for agents and teams.
Structure Specs Into Three Stages
- Build a spec with three stages: requirements, design, and an implementable task list to maintain clear context.
- Use the task list as the agent's working memory so developers and teammates know exactly what is done and what remains.
Bake Tests And Nonfunctional Needs Into Specs
- Generate unit tests and non-functional tasks (scalability, architecture) from the spec to bake quality into outputs.
- Let developers add explicit functional and non-functional requirements early so the tool produces maintainable, production-ready code.