fyi language alone can’t define/describe requirements which is why UML existed.
You could deterministically process any UML diagram into a prose equivalent.
And in fact you couldn't do the other way around (any prose -> UML) because UML is less powerful than natural language and actually can't express everything that natural language can.
If you're genuinely confused, and haven't tried Opus for coding, then it's not surprising you're confused!
It is also okay for you to just not like the idea of LLMs for coding (but say that!).
Also, I mainly pursue these tools so that I can have AI accelerate this process and broker an agreement after negotiating specs with the agent.
I have seen the same idea with processes, pipelines, lists, bullet points, jsons, yamls, trees, prioritization queues all for LLM context and instruction alignment. It's like the authors take the structure they are familiar with, and go 100% in on it until it provides value for them and then they think it's the best thing since sliced bread.
I would like, for once, to see some kind of exploration/abalation against other methods. Or even better, a tool that uses your data to figure out your personal bias and structure preference for writing specs, so that you can have a way of providing yourself value.
brendanmc6•1h ago
> My point is, the spec must live somewhere, even if you don’t write it down. The spec is what you want the software to be. It often exists only in your head or in conversations. You and your team and your business will always care what the spec says, and that’s never going to change. So you’re better off writing it down now! And I think that a plain old list of acceptance criteria is a good place to start. (That’s really all that `feature.yaml` is.)
gnat•20m ago
Unlike you, I wish for the LLM to do as much of the work as possible -- but "as possible" is doing a lot of work in that sentence. I'm still trying to get clear on exactly where I am needed and where Opus and iterations will get there eventually.
It has really challenged me to get clearer on what a requirement is vs a constraint (e.g., "you don't get to reinvent the database schema, we're building part of a larger system"). And I still battle with when and how to specify UI behaviours: so much UI is implicit, and it seems quite daunting to have to specify so much to get it working. I have new respect for whoever wrote the undoubtedly bajillion tests for Flutter and other UI toolkits.
gnat•9m ago
1. Specifications that live outside the code. We have a lot of code for which "what should this do?" is a subjective answer, because "what was this written to do?" is either oral legend or lost in time. As future Claude sessions add new features, this is how Claude can remember what was intentional in the existing code and what were accidents of implementation. And they're useful for documenters, support, etc.
2. Specifications that stay up to date as code is written. No spec survives first contact with the enemy (implementation in the real world). "Huh, there are TWO statuses for Missing orders, but we wrote this assuming just one. How do we display them? Which are we setting or is it configurable?" etc. Implementer finds things the specifier got wrong about reality, things the specifier missed that need to be specified/decided, and testing finds what they both missed.
I have a colleague working on saving architecture decisions, and his description of it feels like a higher-abstraction version of my saving and maintaining requirements.
slopinthebag•9m ago
I am also stealing the idea of talking to LLMs as if it's an email. So funny, we need to be joymaxxing a bit more I think :)