Hot take: using pipelines of agents to write PRDs, delegating to sub-agents for architecture, and then to sub-agents for executing tasks is a waste of time and tokens. Workflows like spec-kit or the BMAD method are cargo-culting workflows of developer organization.

In organizations, procedures were created to work around the natural limitations of human abilities to execute certain tasks. Great product people are not that good at writing code, and good developers are not that good at product vision. React gurus are less efficient at writing Python, etc. So, we split the big task into smaller chunks, spending time communicating the bigger picture and how someone’s work fits into it.

In contrast, think of a capable solo founder. They don’t delegate and normally don’t document their decisions because everything lives in their head, in the same context. Working closely with some folks who scaled their business from a one-man band to a decent organization, I heard them complain about how efficient they were at the beginning of the project and how sluggish things became as they started scaling out and delegating.

A smart agent is the perfect solo founder, and it can implement a product feature end-to-end without hand-holding and delegation. It can collect requirements, implement changes across the board, review its own code, deploy the changes, and write a press release. Modern models and harnesses are usually good enough to run it in a single session.

Next time, cargo-cult a solo founder instead of a developer organization, maybe.