# Writing Specs

> Use when a workflow step drafts or revises a spec artifact — a goal-and-requirements, an architecture, or a module SPEC — or when a workflow skill names it at such a step. The shared quality bar for specs — not a workflow, nothing to execute.

- Skill: `jetbrains/writing-specs` (Agent Skill)
- Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add jetbrains/writing-specs`
- Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/jetbrains/writing-specs/raw
- Safety review: pending
- Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex
- Category: Productivity
- Author: jetbrains (https://skillmd.com/u/jetbrains)
- Updated: 2026-09-17
- Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/jetbrains/writing-specs

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# Writing Specs

The workflow family's shared bar for every spec a workflow produces: **short, honest, on-rails**.
Process skills name this concept at the steps that draft or revise specs; *what* to draft and *when*
stays with the referencing skill. Graph mechanics — frontmatter, link kinds, the `spec_*` tools — are
the spec-graph skill's ground; this concept carries the quality bar the family holds on top of them,
and is where the family's rules for specs and the spec graph accrue.

## Short

- Small enough to read in one sitting. Target signal, not completeness.
- Explain intent, not inventory: what the thing is for, what it owns, where its boundary runs — never
  a file listing or a restatement of the code.

## Honest

- Only settled content appears. Never pad with `[TBD]` or placeholder sections — a section that
  hasn't been settled simply doesn't exist yet.
- Anything inferred rather than confirmed is marked unconfirmed, inline, where it stands.
- New and inferred specs are `status: draft` until the user has reviewed them — the flip out of
  `draft` follows the user's review, never the drafting agent's own judgment.

## On-rails

- High-signal enough that a future agent (or human) lands on the decisions without re-deriving them.
- The spec is the *only* home for rationale: decisions, invariants, trade-offs, and bug post-mortems
  are recorded here, never as code comments — a rationale paragraph found in code is content to
  promote into the owning spec, leaving at most a one-line pointer where misediting would silently
  break something.
- Say each thing once: link by `id` instead of restating; the dependency edges *between* sibling
  modules live in the parent's spec, not in each leaf.
- One spec per *genuine* boundary — not per directory, not per file.