[2606.27045] The Spec Growth Engine: Spec-Anchored, Code-Coupled, Drift-Enforced Architecture for AI-Assisted Software Development

Skip to main content

Search arXiv

Press Enter to search · Advanced search

-->

Computer Science > Software Engineering

arXiv:2606.27045 (cs)

[Submitted on 25 Jun 2026]

Title:The Spec Growth Engine: Spec-Anchored, Code-Coupled, Drift-Enforced Architecture for AI-Assisted Software Development

Authors:Hartwig Grabowski<br>View a PDF of the paper titled The Spec Growth Engine: Spec-Anchored, Code-Coupled, Drift-Enforced Architecture for AI-Assisted Software Development, by Hartwig Grabowski

View PDF<br>HTML (experimental)

Abstract:AI coding agents dramatically accelerate implementation speed but introduce two structural failure modes that existing spec-driven approaches do not fully solve: (1) context explosion -- the agent must reason over an entire repository at once, degrading output quality as the context window fills; and (2) silent spec-code drift -- code evolves, the specification does not, and the divergence becomes invisible until it is costly to repair.

We present the Spec Growth Engine, a lightweight framework that addresses both failure modes through a machine-readable spec graph whose nodes carry explicit contract/design separation, a Spine context assembler that scopes agent context to an ownership path, a vertical-slice growth protocol that enforces hardest-first ordering, and a drift gate that makes spec-code divergence a blocking merge condition.

The design synthesises well-established software engineering principles (Parnas information hiding, C4, ADRs, Walking Skeleton, Reflexion Models, Fitness Functions) into a lean, code-coupled, machine-enforced whole -- without the overhead of heavy-weight frameworks such as RUP or MDA.

Subjects:

Software Engineering (cs.SE); Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI)

Cite as:<br>arXiv:2606.27045 [cs.SE]

(or<br>arXiv:2606.27045v1 [cs.SE] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2606.27045

Focus to learn more

arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite

Submission history<br>From: Hartwig Grabowski [view email]<br>[v1]<br>Thu, 25 Jun 2026 13:51:22 UTC (21 KB)

Full-text links:<br>Access Paper:

View a PDF of the paper titled The Spec Growth Engine: Spec-Anchored, Code-Coupled, Drift-Enforced Architecture for AI-Assisted Software Development, by Hartwig Grabowski<br>View PDF<br>HTML (experimental)<br>TeX Source

view license

Current browse context:

cs.SE

next >

new<br>recent<br>| 2026-06

Change to browse by:

cs<br>cs.AI

References & Citations

NASA ADS<br>Google Scholar

Semantic Scholar

export BibTeX citation<br>Loading...

BibTeX formatted citation

&times;

loading...

Data provided by:

Bookmark

Bibliographic Tools

Bibliographic and Citation Tools

Bibliographic Explorer Toggle

Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?)

Connected Papers Toggle

Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?)

Litmaps Toggle

Litmaps (What is Litmaps?)

scite.ai Toggle

scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?)

Code, Data, Media

Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article

alphaXiv Toggle

alphaXiv (What is alphaXiv?)

Links to Code Toggle

CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers (What is CatalyzeX?)

DagsHub Toggle

DagsHub (What is DagsHub?)

GotitPub Toggle

Gotit.pub (What is GotitPub?)

Huggingface Toggle

Hugging Face (What is Huggingface?)

ScienceCast Toggle

ScienceCast (What is ScienceCast?)

Demos

Demos

Replicate Toggle

Replicate (What is Replicate?)

Spaces Toggle

Hugging Face Spaces (What is Spaces?)

Spaces Toggle

TXYZ.AI (What is TXYZ.AI?)

Related Papers

Recommenders and Search Tools

Link to Influence Flower

Influence Flower (What are Influence Flowers?)

Core recommender toggle

CORE Recommender (What is CORE?)

Author

Venue

Institution

Topic

About arXivLabs

arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators

arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website.

Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them.

Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs .

Which authors of this paper are endorsers? |<br>Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)

Major funding support from