Dear mailing list maintainers, We would be grateful if you could distribute the following call for papers. Please let me know if any changes are needed to meet the posting guidelines. Thank you for your time. Best regards, Yangtian Zi Northeastern University SpecOps 2026 Web Chair ************************************************************* 1st International Workshop on Specification-Driven Development Lifecycle (SpecOps) October 6, 2026 https://conf.researchr.org/home/splash-issta-2026/specops-2026 Oakland Marriott City Centre hotel, Oakland, California, USA ************************************************************* Overview ========= As software systems grow in complexity and autonomy, the gap between stakeholder intent and system implementation widens across the entire development lifecycle. This is a challenge at the heart of modern software engineering: the specification gap. Requirements are often informal and scattered, architectural decisions drift over time, test artifacts only partially capture intent, and legacy codebases frequently lack reliable ground-truth specifications. Recentering the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) around specifications offers a principled path toward alignment, correctness, and maintainability. SpecOps 2026 advances a vision of specification-driven SDLC (Spec-Driven SDLC), where specifications serve as first-class artifacts spanning requirements, design, implementation, testing, deployment, and evolution. The workshop explores how foundation models (e.g., GPT-4, Claude, Codex, Code Llama) and agentic AI systems can synthesize, refine, validate, and operationalize specifications from heterogeneous sources -- including natural language requirements, source code, execution traces, and architectural models -- while enabling continuous verification and lifecycle-wide traceability. Bringing together researchers and practitioners from Software Engineering, Programming Languages, Formal Methods, and Artificial Intelligence, SpecOps 2026 aims to foster dialogue on how AI-powered tools and autonomous agents can transform specifications from static documentation into living, executable, and lifecycle-spanning drivers of modern software and AI system development. Areas of interest include but are not limited to: - Spec-driven development for AI-assisted programming - Formal/semi-formal specifications for LLM-based systems - Verification, validation, and alignment of autonomous agents - Specs as interfaces between humans and AI systems - Industrial experiences and emerging practice Important dates =================== Abstract submission deadline (optional): June 10, 2026 Paper submission deadline (optional): June 15, 2026 Notification: July 15, 2026 Workshop: October 6, 2026 Paper submission guidelines ============================= We invite three types of submissions: * Full Papers (page limit: 10 pages, including appendix + 2 pages for references) describing original theoretical or empirical research, new techniques, methods for emerging systems, in-depth case studies and industrial experience reports. * Short Papers (page limit: 4 pages, including appendix + 1 page for references) that fall into the following categories: - Short Research Papers: Preliminary results, Vision papers, Position papers. - Tool Demonstration Papers: Descriptions of tools and systems with live demos at the workshop. - Dataset Papers: Descriptions of benchmark datasets and evaluation corpora with an associated artifact. * Extended Abstracts (page limit: 4 pages, including appendix + 1 page for references) that fall into the same categories as short papers. While the content is the same as short papers, extended abstracts are not subject to Article Processing Charges (APCs; see https://libraries.acm.org/acmopen/article-types). Submissions must adhere to the ACM SIGPLAN style (acmart format - sigplan subformat, see http://www.sigplan.org/Resources/Author/#acmart-format for detailed instructions) and must be submitted via the SpecOps 2026 author interface of HotCRP: https://specops26.hotcrp.com Submission should be in the two-column proceedings format, usually following the LaTeX document class acmart with option sigplan (SIGPLAN/SPLASH-associated) or sigconf (SIGSOFT/ISSTA-associated). It is recommended to use the review option when submitting a paper; this option enables line numbers for easy reference in reviews. All papers (Full research paper, Short research paper, Tool demonstration paper, Dataset papers) will undergo a double-blind review process. Author names and affiliations must not appear in the body of Full Papers, and self-reference should be avoided and made in the third person. We welcome both academic and industry contributions and aim to foster a vibrant discussion at the intersection of software engineering, programming languages, and AI systems. We look forward to your submissions and participation! Organizers ============ Rajdeep Mukherjee, Amazon Anastasia Mavridou, KBR Inc at NASA Ames Research Center Saikat Dutta, Cornell University Program Committee =================== Jose Pablo Cambronero, Google Cristina David, University of Bristol Marie Farrell, The University of Manchester Alessio Ferrari, CRN-ISTI Divya Gopinath, KBR Inc at NASA Ames Research Center Eunsuk Kang, Carnegie Mellon University Andreas Katis, KBR Inc at NASA Ames Research Center Martin Kellogg, New Jersey Institute Of Technology Pascal Kessell, Meta Pardis Pashakhanloo, Amazon Web Services Brandon Paulsen, Amazon Chao Peng, ByteDance Corina Pasareanu, Amazon Prime Air Ajitha Rajan, The University of Edinburgh Baishakhi Ray, Columbia University Marcel Sousa, University of Oxford Michele Tufano, Google He Ye, University College London