From Complex to Complicated: What Executable Specifications Actually Do

This is Part 2 of a four-part series, "The Specification as Quality Gate." Part 1 developed the correlated error hypothesis. This post grounds the specification-first argument in complexity science. Parts 3 and 4 will follow. Ask an engineering team why they write tests, and most will say: to catch bugs. Ask why they write specifications, and the answers are less coherent. Documentation. Compliance. Handover. The process said so. None of those answers explain what a specification actually does to the nature of the problem being solved.