Constitutional Spec-Driven Development: Enforcing Security by Construction in AI-Assisted Code Generation

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2602.02584v1
• Date: Sat, 31 Jan 2026 19:08:16 GMT
• Title: Constitutional Spec-Driven Development: Enforcing Security by Construction in AI-Assisted Code Generation
• Authors: Srinivas Rao Marri,
• Abstract summary: AI-assisted "vibe coding" enables rapid software development but introduces significant security risks.<n>We present Constitutional Spec-Driven Development, a methodology that embeds non-negotiable security principles into the specification.<n>We show that constitutional constraints reduce security defects by 73% compared to unconstrained AI generation.
• Score: 0.0
• License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Abstract: The proliferation of AI-assisted "vibe coding" enables rapid software development but introduces significant security risks, as Large Language Models (LLMs) prioritize functional correctness over security. We present Constitutional Spec-Driven Development, a methodology that embeds non-negotiable security principles into the specification layer, ensuring AI-generated code adheres to security requirements by construction rather than inspection. Our approach introduces a Constitution: a versioned, machine-readable document encoding security constraints derived from Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE)/MITRE Top 25 vulnerabilities and regulatory frameworks. We demonstrate the methodology through a banking microservices application, selected as a representative example domain due to its stringent regulatory and security requirements, implementing customer management, account operations, and transaction processing. The methodology itself is domain-agnostic. The implementation addresses 10 critical CWE vulnerabilities through constitutional constraints with full traceability from principles to code locations. Our case study shows that constitutional constraints reduce security defects by 73% compared to unconstrained AI generation while maintaining developer velocity. We contribute a formal framework for constitutional security, a complete development methodology, and empirical evidence that proactive security specification outperforms reactive security verification in AI-assisted development workflows.

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