SpekLess: A Lightweight Spec-First Development Workflow for AI Coding Agents

SpekLess is a lightweight spec-first development workflow designed for AI coding agents (e.g., Claude Code). It uses a single design document (spec.md) and an append-only work log (execution.md), along with ten slash command skills, to implement the full lifecycle of clarification → planning → implementation → verification—without the need for state machines, lock files, or checkpoint files.

Spec-driven development in AI coding tools like Claude Code is valuable, but existing tools have friction:

• High token consumption: Each workflow step (researcher, planner, plan-checker, executor, verifier, integration-checker, nyquist-auditor...) starts a cold-booted sub-agent that re-reads files and writes its own artifacts
• Forced atomic commits: Pollutes git history and locks you into a rigid state machine

• Scatters a single feature across three files (spec.md, plan.md, tasks.md)
• Uses a template-driven process that doesn't integrate with Claude Code skills

• Human-readable, but agents can't get help—each discussion, planning, and verification is ad-hoc

SpekLess is a minimal system that keeps the good parts and removes the rest:

1. One living spec.md per feature

   • Reads like an RFC
   • Includes Context, Discussion, Plan, and Verification sections
   • All content for a feature is in one place

2. Append-only execution.md work log

   • Human-readable narrative of actual work
   • Coexists with the spec
   • Replaces atomic commit discipline and doesn't force commits at others' paces

3. Flat feature list

   • No nested hierarchy of milestones → phases → tasks
   • Large work is broken into sibling documents via the part_of: frontmatter field

4. Ten skills instead of thirty sub-agents

   • A single main agent drives everything via slash commands
   • Sub-agents are only used as context firewalls for broad codebase reads, never as pipeline steps

5. Intervene at any time

   • Documents are the state
   • No STATE.md, no checkpoint files, no locked step order
   • Edit any section, re-run any skill, at any time

Skill	Use Case
/spek:kickoff	Launch a greenfield project. Runs an extended PRD-style discussion, writes to .specs/project.md, and proposes setting up initial feature folders
/spek:new	Add a new feature to any project. Creates a skeleton feature folder—nothing more
/spek:adopt	Retroactively document existing code. Reads actual files (via the Explore sub-agent), reverse-engineers Context and Plan sections, and marks all tasks as completed. Exclusive to SpekLess