Ask HN: What do you use for normative specs to drive AI agents?
my current convictions are: 1. "agentic" development is here to stay, whether we like it or not 2. markdown prompts are a terrible way of driving such development, no matter how much structure and hierarchy you're trying to impose (whether chaining or fan-out into personas, etc) 3. jigsaw-puzzle approach is less terrible - declare the "boundary" of any component or subsystem in a normative language of your choice and let the agent fill the insides it's fine if you think those convictions are incorrect, but i'm more interested in feedback from folks that more-or-less agree, with regard to the last point: what do YOU use for normative language to describe component boundary, function and cross-component interactions? i've had mild success with openapi, but maybe there are better alternatives? 0 comments on Hacker News.
my current convictions are: 1. "agentic" development is here to stay, whether we like it or not 2. markdown prompts are a terrible way of driving such development, no matter how much structure and hierarchy you're trying to impose (whether chaining or fan-out into personas, etc) 3. jigsaw-puzzle approach is less terrible - declare the "boundary" of any component or subsystem in a normative language of your choice and let the agent fill the insides it's fine if you think those convictions are incorrect, but i'm more interested in feedback from folks that more-or-less agree, with regard to the last point: what do YOU use for normative language to describe component boundary, function and cross-component interactions? i've had mild success with openapi, but maybe there are better alternatives?
my current convictions are: 1. "agentic" development is here to stay, whether we like it or not 2. markdown prompts are a terrible way of driving such development, no matter how much structure and hierarchy you're trying to impose (whether chaining or fan-out into personas, etc) 3. jigsaw-puzzle approach is less terrible - declare the "boundary" of any component or subsystem in a normative language of your choice and let the agent fill the insides it's fine if you think those convictions are incorrect, but i'm more interested in feedback from folks that more-or-less agree, with regard to the last point: what do YOU use for normative language to describe component boundary, function and cross-component interactions? i've had mild success with openapi, but maybe there are better alternatives? 0 comments on Hacker News.
my current convictions are: 1. "agentic" development is here to stay, whether we like it or not 2. markdown prompts are a terrible way of driving such development, no matter how much structure and hierarchy you're trying to impose (whether chaining or fan-out into personas, etc) 3. jigsaw-puzzle approach is less terrible - declare the "boundary" of any component or subsystem in a normative language of your choice and let the agent fill the insides it's fine if you think those convictions are incorrect, but i'm more interested in feedback from folks that more-or-less agree, with regard to the last point: what do YOU use for normative language to describe component boundary, function and cross-component interactions? i've had mild success with openapi, but maybe there are better alternatives?
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Reviewed by Tha Kur
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March 27, 2026
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