Spec
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What is Spec?
A spec is a written plan for what to build, with the goal and the important details, clear enough that a fresh agent or developer can carry out the work without the conversation that produced it.
A written plan for what to build, including the goal and important details, that a fresh agent can use to carry out the work.
A spec is the written plan a talk-it-out conversation leaves behind. It turns the decisions from that conversation into something you can hand to a fresh agent with "build this." Read the spec yourself before handing it off so you can catch missing details or a goal that is still too fuzzy.
How it relates to Orbit
In Coordinator Mode, a written plan is decomposed into subtasks and reviewed at Gate 1 before any agent starts. See Coordinator Mode for details.
When you would use it
You use a spec after exploring an idea and before handing the implementation to an agent, especially when the conversation produced decisions that should not be lost.
Common operations
- Writing down the screens, rules, and success checks for a new recipe app after talking through the idea.
- Handing a reviewed implementation plan to a fresh agent so it can build without repeating the discovery conversation.
Frequently asked questions
What makes a good spec for a coding agent?
A clear goal, the constraints that matter, how to verify the result, and what would count as failure.
How do specs work in Orbit?
Apollo can help shape a prompt before you queue it, and Coordinator Mode decomposes a larger plan into subtasks reviewed at Gate 1. See Coordinator Mode.