SpecGuard — Continuous Spec Drift Detection & Enforcement for AI-Assisted Dev Teams

The Problem

AI coding agents are transforming software development, but they have a dirty secret: they drift from specifications constantly. A developer writes a detailed spec — API contracts, architectural decisions, business rules — feeds it to Claude Code or Cursor, and the agent produces code that looks right but subtly violates the original intent.

This "spec drift" manifests as silent bugs, broken API contracts, ignored edge cases, and architectural decay. A Reddit user on r/AI_Agents described it as "getting plausible but wrong output — the agent confidently builds something that almost matches my spec but misses critical constraints." Another on r/LLMDevs wrote: "I stopped blaming models for agent drift. It was my workflow — there's no tool that continuously checks if my code still matches what I designed."

The problem compounds over time. Each AI-generated commit drifts a little further from the spec. After weeks of development, the codebase bears little resemblance to the original architecture. Teams then face expensive rewrites or accept technical debt that grows exponentially.