Spec-Driven Development: When Structure Helps and When It Becomes Tax (opens in new tab)

Tisha Chawla · Software Engineer at Microsoft 1. The Ambiguity Tax The bottleneck in AI-assisted engineering is no longer code generation. It is intent preservation. A human engineer can resolve ambiguity using product context, team memory, architectural taste, and accumulated judgment. A coding agent cannot assume that context unless it is written somewhere durable. When intent only exists in chat history, the model fills the gaps with plausible assumptions. Some assumptions are harmless. Ot...