I'm writing the specs by hand.

The LLM solely helps with research and retaining the normative document layout (RFC 7322).

Since the spec grounds the underlying implementation I have to fully understand it, writing the spec manually prevents infecting the spec with the typical LLM specification slop.

When writing the specs, the goal is to systematically keep the right balance between scope and depth:

- Scope takes the most effort because it's the only thing preventing the model from escaping an intended boundary, that includes things like stable constraints/interfaces/data models

- Depth is something where I can tolerate "non-normative" interpretations by the LLM. Unless I need a stable implementation, I can decide how much I manually invest into depth vs. letting the model figure the "good enough" solution.

Since the scope/boundaries are explicitly set, the internals are pretty encapsulated and the model comparing an implementation with the spec can identify the "non-normative" pieces and communicate those to me. Then I can decide between "good enough" or to refine these non-normative implementations and make them normative.

From my various experiments the spec vs. code ratio is roughly 1/8.