Before Delegating to Agents: ADRs and Spec-Driven Development as the Foundation for AI in the Team
SPARklE manages real users' energy data and provides guidance with direct financial impact. In this context human control isn't negotiable. But that doesn't mean giving up on AI: it means building the right foundations before delegating. The project started as a EU/PNRR-funded research initiative, with four companies involved and features explored freely. When WellD decided to turn it into a product, we found ourselves with a completely different backlog than expected, and an architecture that showed the marks of the research phase's pace. Two practices helped us rebuild solidity without slowing down development. First: a formal Architecture Decision Record system where developers and architects discuss a decision with AI, stress-test it with explicit alternatives and trade-offs, and submit it to adversarial review by the team before moving forward: decisions are more solid, shared, and traceable. Second: Spec-Driven Development, which forces us to refine requirements before writing code and which lets us delegate part of the development to dedicated agents, while keeping human supervision and quality verification on every step. This isn't a full multi-agent system yet. It's the infrastructure a multi-agent system needs to operate reliably in a domain where mistakes have a real cost. Key takeaways: In domains with sensitive data and financial impact, AI gets introduced by building control foundations, not bypassing them. ADRs with adversarial review make architectural decisions more solid and shared, with or without AI Spec-Driven Development is the practical prerequisite for delegating development to agents while keeping human oversight