Spec-driven development with AI agents: constitutions, checkpoints, and handoffs

Short summary

A practical framework for using AI coding agents on large features by combining spec-driven development with two operational mechanisms: explicit checkpoints and structured handoffs. The constitution-spec-plan hierarchy gives agents rails, while checkpoint slicing keeps diffs reviewable and a separate reviewer agent catches issues before human review. Structured handoffs preserve decisions across fresh sessions that lack prior context.

• •Constitution (principles), spec (what/why), and frozen plan (how) give AI agents bounded rails
• •Checkpoints slice plans into review-sized groups with green gates and deviation notes
• •A separate reviewer agent writes a brief on each diff before human review, catching omissions and hallucinations

Generated with AI, which can make mistakes.