Articles

Writing on building with AI

Thoughts on spec-driven development, AI-native workflows, and what it actually takes to ship good software when agents are doing the building.

A brief and a spec are not the same thing.

AI agents compress build cycles to hours. The coordination checkpoints that kept everyone aligned were designed for days. Something had to give.

AI code merges cleanly. The decision trail doesn't. Six months later, nobody knows why the code is the way it is — and the diff won't tell you.

I've been doing Agile for most of my career. I rediscovered why acceptance criteria matter, somewhat embarrassingly, while building Penling.