Spec-driven development gives a team structured artifacts to build from. Those artifacts can already include reasoning, requirements, and human review. Pathmode adds a product review workflow around the repository decision.
The engineer’s agent turns the request into proposed behavior. A product reviewer compares that behavior with the original wording, asks for corrections, and reviews the revision the agent returns. Authorization records who agreed to which revision. A later change requires fresh authorization before implementation proceeds.
The repository’s intent.md remains the implementation authority. The connected workspace holds private evidence, the original request, corrections, and the authorization record. A proposal can proceed without evidence; missing backing stays visible, and the person reviewing it decides whether that is sufficient.
When the build reveals a contradiction, the agent records a finding and can propose an exact correction. The reviewer accepts, counter-proposes, or rejects that correction in the proposal view. Acceptance creates a request for the repository agent to apply; it does not edit the file or authorize the resulting revision automatically.
These workflows can be combined. Pathmode imports an existing OpenSpec change without modifying the source change, and exports to OpenSpec, AGENTS.md, CLAUDE.md, .cursorrules, or an outcome rubric. Those exports do not replace human review.
Tessl’s current offering focuses on agent skills and enablement, so its earlier Usage Specs framing is not a good description of this category today. See the dedicated Tessl comparison for that distinction. Pathmode has no dedicated Tessl export or integration.