---
title: Adopting AI-assisted development without losing the plot
description: Rolled out a spec-first workflow, multi-agent orchestration, and a customer-facing RAG pipeline, scaling throughput without adding headcount.
date: 2024-06-10
tags: applied AI, RAG, AI-assisted development, DSPy
source: https://brianchildress.co/projects/ai-assisted-development-without-mess
---

# Adopting AI-assisted development without losing the plot

## Situation

The team wanted the speed AI-assisted development promises, but without the failure mode that comes with it: piles of generated code no one fully understands and no one can safely change.

## What I did

I rolled out a spec-first workflow team-wide: specifications written in OpenSpec, then implemented by Claude Code, with alternate harnesses used for specific tasks. I used multi-agent orchestration to parallelize implementation and review, and applied DSPy to systematically optimize and evaluate the prompts behind the platform's AI-powered features. I also built a full retrieval-augmented-generation pipeline powering customer-facing chat, with model routing by use case to keep both quality and token spend in check.

## Result

The spec-first workflow became a primary driver of the release-cadence gains from the platform turnaround, letting the team scale throughput without adding headcount, while keeping the system legible enough to change with confidence.