the spec-first approach is the real insight here. in my experience with AI-assisted codegen, having the model write a detailed spec doc before any implementation code cuts the iteration cycles dramatically. without it the agent just thrashes between plausible-looking approaches. with a good spec it can stay coherent across thousands of lines because it has something to ground against.

the two-month timeline is interesting too - would love to know the actual compute cost. for a working kernel driver that would have otherwise never existed, even $500 in API calls seems like a bargain.