Spec-Driven Development Tutorial using GitHub Spec Kit

In our main article on Spec-Driven Development (SDD), we explored the idea of beginning every AI-assisted project with clearly defined requirements, not jumping right into code.

This companion piece takes that idea from theory to practice. Here, we’ll walk through the complete workflow, from the first line of a specification to long-term maintenance, using a real-world example.

If you want to see how to bring SDD to life and how tools like GitHub Spec Kit can help operationalize it, this guide will show you the way.

Before You Begin

Before diving into the step-by-step workflow, it’s worth pausing to see what makes Spec-Driven Development different from traditional agile or documentation-heavy approaches.

1. It isn’t about adding paperwork. It’s about creating clarity.
2. The goal is shared understanding, every contributor, human or AI, aligned around the same mental model.
3. The best specs are built together, with product, engineering, and QA shaping a single source of truth.

Once you start treating the spec as a living contract rather than a static document, the rest of the process naturally falls into place.

SDD Workflow Deepdive

Below is a practical, spec-first workflow using a trip-planner AI agent as the running example. We’ll reference GitHub-style spec tooling using GitHub’s Spec Kit to keep things concrete, but any well-structured markdown spec can work.