Running My Own Open-Source SDD Tool Across 15 Projects: An Honest Dogfooding Report

AI writes code fast, but every new chat it forgets your project's architecture and conventions, so you explain it all over again. More tools, more fatigue.

I turned that pain into an open-source tool, Prospec (MIT, TypeScript CLI): progressive disclosure loads context on demand, delta specs track only changes, and AI Knowledge keeps project knowledge structured and version-controlled instead of vanishing with the chat window.

But this isn't just a tool demo. Over the past six months I've run Prospec across 15 of my own projects, from personal side projects to work codebases: which designs genuinely saved time, which were over-engineering nobody used, how SDD feels completely different on brownfield vs greenfield, and what I borrowed from Spec-Kit and OpenSpec and deliberately didn't.

For developers who code with AI daily but are tired of re-explaining their project. You'll leave with an SDD workflow you can try immediately, and an honest list of which SDD tricks are just hype.