Google AI Releases Elephant-Goldfish Model Plugin for Spec-First Coding
Summary
- Google open-sourced the Elephant-Goldfish Model (EGM) plugin, a design-and-review layer for AI coding agents under the Apache 2.0 license.
- The EGM framework forces an AI agent (the Elephant) to write a Markdown specification before writing any code, avoiding code generation without a spec.
- Fresh, stateless subagents (the Goldfish) then attack and review the specification across five sequential stages before implementation.
- The plugin includes 7 skills, 9 reviewer personas, 6 brainstorm lenses, and 5 review stages, supporting harnesses like Codex, Claude Code, and ChatGPT.
Why it matters
EGM introduces a spec-first workflow utilizing isolated zero-context subagents to catch flawed assumptions and edge cases in design documents before code is generated, helping mitigate AI context collapse and slop.