Dispatch
Markus Eisele's spec-sizing framework: validate the spec before you scale the implementation
Writing for O'Reilly via the Stack Overflow blog on August 21, 2026, Eisele argues the trade-off is not specs versus no specs but minimum total cost across specification, implementation and verification. He maps four levels: light boundaries and constraints for exploratory architecture work, structured intent plus acceptance criteria for single bounded tasks, BDD and executable contract tests for deterministic CRUD and integrations, and typed contracts with validation rules for multi-agent pipelines. His operational move is giving specs their own review cycle, with agents drafting specs for other agents to critique for contradictions and untestable claims before any implementation starts.
↳ Follow the thread