I built a terminal chess app for #Kiroween that stitches together python-chess, Lichess puzzles, Stockfish analysis, and ai (using GPT-4) for trash talk. The AI actually reacts to your moves. if you blunder - it laughs at you, play well and it grudgingly respects you.
huge props to kiro for actually helping me put this together in just a weekend with its powerful spec driven development feature.
The Setup
I wrote four specs before any code: chess engine, puzzle engine, terminal renderer, and UI navigation. Each spec outlined what the component needed to do, not how. Kiro figured out the implementation.
Then I added two steering docs - one for code style (PEP 8, type hints, error handling) and one for UI consistency (feedback patterns, navigation commands, screen transitions).
What Changed
Normally when working with AI coding assistants, you spend a lot of time re-explaining context. With specs and steering you pretty much just explain once. When I asked for "Analysis Mode", Kiro already knew how the renderer worked, what input formats to accept, and that every screen needs a way back to the menu.
The most impressive generation I'd say was the AIOpponent class. I described wanting "a spooky AI that trash talks based on how well I'm playing" and got back a complete implementation with GPT-4 integration, 3-second timeouts, static fallbacks, and move quality detection for contextual taunts.
Takehome
Specs are not just documentation - they are context that compounds. Every feature I added benefited from the architecture decisions already captured in those markdown files.
Check out the project: here
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