VSDD: The AI Coding Methodology Worth Stealing (The Short Version)

A methodology called Verified Spec-Driven Development (VSDD) is trending on Hacker News. 130+ points. The full spec is dense. Here is what is actually worth stealing if you are a solo builder moving fast. The One Insight That Matters When you write code yourself, you can be vague about requirements — your brain fills in gaps. When an AI agent does it, vagueness is fatal. The agent fills gaps confidently, quickly, and wrong. Spec-first discipline solves this. Before any AI coding session: Write what the feature does (3-5 sentences) Write what it must never do (edge cases, failure modes) Write what success looks like (testable outcome) That is it. That is the part worth keeping from VSDD. The Adversarial Reviewer Trick After you build something with Claude (or any AI), paste the result into a fresh AI session — different context, no memory of the decisions — and ask: "You are a hyper-critical senior engineer. Find every flaw." Fresh context catches things the original AI missed because i