Things You Should Never Do When Doing Spec-Driven Development with Claude

Senior engineers who've adopted AI-assisted workflows know the promise: faster iteration, fewer misunderstandings, and a codebase that reflects intent rather than improvisation. Spec-driven development with Claude is one of the most powerful patterns in that playbook. But it's also one of the easiest to misuse. Here's what separates teams that get consistent, production-quality output from those who spend more time correcting Claude than coding. 1. Don't Write Vague Specs and Hope Claude Fills the Gaps Claude is an excellent reasoning engine, but it is not a mind reader. When your spec says "build a user management system," Claude will make assumptions : and they will be reasonable assumptions, grounded in generic best practices. They will also be wrong for your context. As an architect, your job is to make the implicit explicit. That means naming the bounded contexts, the data ownership rules, the failure modes, and the non-functional requirements in the spec itself. If it's not writt