Specs
Use Mind's structured specifications to break down complex features into detailed implementation plans with tracking
What are specs?
Specs or specifications are structured artifacts that formalize the development process for features and bug fixes, turning a high-level idea into a detailed implementation plan with clear tracking and accountability.
| Capability | IDE | CLI | Web |
|---|---|---|---|
| Feature Specs | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Bugfix Specs | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Quick Spec | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Parallel task execution | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Analyse Requirements | ✓ | ✓ | — |
| Correctness (property-based testing) | ✓ | — | — |
With Mind's specs, you can:
- Break down requirements into user stories with acceptance criteria
- Build design docs with sequence diagrams and architecture plans
- Track implementation progress across discrete tasks
- Collaborate effectively between product and engineering teams
Core Structure
Every spec generates three key files that form the foundation of your specification:
- requirements.md (or bugfix.md) - Captures user stories, acceptance criteria, or bug analysis in structured notation
- design.md - Documents technical architecture, sequence diagrams, and implementation considerations
- tasks.md - Provides a detailed implementation plan with discrete, trackable tasks
These three describe one feature and are written fresh for the next one. What does not change between features lives a level above, in the three steering documents that hold the product, the stack and the structure. A spec says what to build; those say what the project is, and the agent reads them on every turn. Project steering files covers how to write them.
Idea for feature 'foo'
.mind/specs/foo
Three-Phase Workflow
All specs follow a three-phase workflow that transforms your idea into executable implementation:
Requirements or Bug Analysis — Define what needs to be built or fixed
- Feature Specs: User stories and acceptance criteria in
requirements.md - Bugfix Specs: Bug analysis with current/expected/unchanged behaviour in
bugfix.md
Design — Create technical architecture and implementation approach in design.md
- System architecture and component design
- Sequence diagrams and data flow
- Error handling and testing strategy
Tasks — Generate discrete, executable implementation tasks in tasks.md
- Trackable tasks with clear outcomes
- Real-time status updates as you implement
- Run tasks individually or all at once
Learn more
Go deeper into Mind's Spec system with these guides:
Feature Specs
Build new features with structured workflows.
Quick Spec
Generate requirements, design, and tasks in one pass without approval gates.
Analyse Requirements
Catch inconsistencies, ambiguities, and gaps in your requirements before design.
Bugfix Specs
Fix bugs surgically while preventing regressions.
Best Practices
FAQs on best practices when working with specs.
Task Execution
Mind provides a task execution interface for tasks.md files that displays real-time status updates. Tasks are updated as in-progress or completed, allowing you to efficiently track implementation progress.
Running tasks in parallel
When you run all tasks on a spec, Mind analyses your task list, figures out which tasks depend on each other, and runs independent tasks concurrently. For most feature specs, this cuts execution time significantly without any setup.
Mind builds a dependency graph of the tasks in your tasks.md and groups independent tasks into waves:
- Wave 1 - all tasks with no dependencies. These run concurrently.
- Wave 2 - all tasks whose dependencies were satisfied by Wave 1. These run concurrently.
- Wave N - continues until all tasks are complete.
Waves execute sequentially; tasks within a wave execute concurrently.
Types of Specs
Mind supports two types of specs to match your development needs:
Feature Specs
For building new features and capabilities in your application. Feature Specs guide you through requirements gathering, technical design, and implementation planning with two workflow variants: Requirements-First and Design-First. For well-understood features, you can also use Quick Spec to auto-generate all three artifacts without approval gates.
Bugfix Specs
For systematically diagnosing and fixing bugs with surgical precision while preventing regressions. Bugfix Specs help you identify root causes, design fixes, and validate that nothing else breaks.
Getting Started
- From the Mind pane, click the + button under Specs. Alternatively, choose Spec from the chat pane.
- Mind will ask if you are developing a Feature or fixing a Bug:
- If you choose Feature, describe your feature and choose your workflow: Requirements-First or Design-First
- If you choose Bug, describe your bug
- Follow the workflow through each phase to implementation.