Spec Chat

Iterate on your backend with conversational AI.

Spec Chat is Backdrift’s conversational interface for refining your backend specification. Instead of editing JSON or code, you chat with the AI to add features, modify entities, and adjust behavior.

How It Works

After your initial prompt generates a spec, you can continue the conversation:

You: "Add a comments feature to tasks"

AI: "I've added a Comment entity with the following fields:
- id (string, primary key)
- task_id (foreign key to Task)
- author_id (foreign key to User)
- content (string)
- created_at (datetime)

Comments are scoped to the same tenant as their parent task."

The AI understands context from your existing spec and makes intelligent decisions about relationships, permissions, and data modeling.

Common Operations

Adding Features

"Add file attachments to tasks"
"Add a comments section to projects"
"Add tags to tasks with autocomplete support"

Modifying Entities

"Make the due_date field required"
"Add a 'blocked' status to tasks"
"Change priority from string to enum: low, medium, high, urgent"

Adjusting Permissions

"Only admins should be able to delete projects"
"Viewers should not see the 'salary' field on employees"
"Allow members to update tasks but not delete them"

Adding Workflows

"Send an email when a task is assigned"
"Run a nightly job to archive completed tasks older than 30 days"
"When a user signs up, create a default organization for them"

Capability Detection

Spec Chat automatically detects what cloud capabilities your request needs:

Request	Detected Capability
”Send email notifications”	Email (SES)
“Upload profile pictures”	File Storage (S3)
“Run a nightly cleanup job”	Scheduled Jobs (EventBridge)
“Process payments asynchronously”	Durable Workflows

If you request something we don’t support yet, the AI will suggest alternatives:

You: "Add SAML single sign-on"

AI: "SAML is not currently supported. However, I can configure:
- Email/password authentication with MFA
- Social login (Google, GitHub) via Cognito federation

Would you like me to add social login instead?"

Chat History

Your conversation history is saved per project. You can:

• Review previous changes
• Understand why certain decisions were made
• Pick up where you left off

Tips for Effective Chatting

Be Specific

❌ “Add notifications” ✅ “Send an email to the project owner when a task is marked complete”

One Change at a Time

❌ “Add comments, file attachments, and activity logging” ✅ “Add comments to tasks” → “Add file attachments” → “Add activity logging”

Ask Questions

You can ask the AI to explain its decisions:

• “Why did you add a tenant_id to comments?”
• “What indexes will be created for tasks?”
• “How will file uploads work?”

Undo Changes

If you don’t like a change:

• “Undo the last change”
• “Remove the comments feature”
• “Go back to before I added file attachments”

Applying Changes

After chatting, your changes are in a draft state. Click Apply Spec to save them to your project.

Only applied specs can be:

• Used to generate Blueprints
• Validated
• Deployed

Validation

Learn how Backdrift validates your spec before deployment.