The tools said it out loud over the last year. AWS shipped Kiro in July 2025, GitHub open-sourced Spec Kit that September, and Ethan Mollick put it plainly: the skill worth having is “specs, not tricks”. The specification, not the code, is the real artefact now. The code got cheap; the document that decides what to build got valuable.
I’ve been building on that premise from the start – I just came at it from the other end and hadn’t heard the name. Touchstone’s verdict is the part founders notice, but the verdict was never the point – every read also ships a build-ready spec suite a developer can start from the same day.
Here’s the part the wave doesn’t mention: a spec is only worth having if the judgment behind it is honest. It’s easy to generate a beautiful build guide for an idea nobody will buy. That’s the reason the suite includes the one document most tools won’t produce – the No-Go.
The spec is the deliverable. The honesty is what makes it safe to act on.
→ Read the full piece: https://digitalventurestudio.com/blog/the-spec-was-the-point
→ Get an honest read on your own idea: https://usetouchstone.ai