Gherkin
Hacker ApprovedBehavior spec language in Developer tools
Plain-English specs that double as executable tests, which people find clear for working with LLMs. Main caveat: hard to trace rules to code.
Plain-English specs that double as executable tests, which people find clear for working with LLMs. Main caveat: hard to trace rules to code.
14 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 12
- criticize it
- 2
- approval share
- 86%
Recommended in 5 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 12 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 6 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 5 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Plain English specs run as tests
“The nice thing about writing acceptance criteria this way is that they become executable and analyzable.”
Comment from 3 May 2026 in “Specsmaxxing – On overcoming AI psychosis, and why I write specs in YAML” “It works very well because they are both a description of the application and actual executable tests”
Comment from 20 Aug 2026 in “Show HN: Huzzah – a novel approach to coding with AI” “check out cucumber / gherkin - very old school regex-to-code plain english kind of system”
Comment from 10 Mar 2026 in “You hired the AI to write the tests. Of course they pass” Clear for working with LLMs
“Very neat, seems quite appropriate for the way people currently work with LLMs.”
Comment from 31 Oct 2026 in “Show HN: A working Nintendo in ~1GB of Qwen weights” “I really like gherkin for agentic engineering, it's very clarifying.”
Comment from 5 Jun 2026 in “Ask HN: What is your (AI) dev tech stack / workflow? (June 2026)” “I really like gherkin for agentic engineering, it's very clarifying”
Comment from 5 Jun 2026 in “Ask HN: What is your (AI) dev tech stack / workflow? (June 2026)” Good syntax for describing behavior
“I feel Gherkin syntax is best form to describe the behavior.”
Comment from 22 Aug 2026 in “Show HN: Huzzah – a novel approach to coding with AI” “I prefer that to the 'verbose' original syntax.”
Comment from 3 May 2026 in “Specsmaxxing – On overcoming AI psychosis, and why I write specs in YAML” “Gherkin is kind of nice though.”
Comment from 19 Mar 2026 in “A sufficiently detailed spec is code” Works well in practice
“That works great in practice”
Comment from 12 Mar 2026 in “Kotlin creator's new language: a formal way to talk to LLMs instead of English” “Been doing wonders for me.”
Comment from 26 Oct 2026 in “Tasks as Code: Move Your Tickets into the Repository”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Hard to trace rules to code
“It works reasonably well, but without a direct source map from the rules to the code, you still end up with a very difficult-to-understand codebase.”
Comment from 20 Aug 2026 in “Show HN: Huzzah – a novel approach to coding with AI”
What people said
All 15 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“you might look at the actual syntax and the way the language conceptualizes stuff, and might actually learn something new and useful”
“When you wanted to have massive friction when refactoring your tests!”
“Very neat, seems quite appropriate for the way people currently work with LLMs.”
“Been doing wonders for me.”
“I feel Gherkin syntax is best form to describe the behavior.”
“It works very well because they are both a description of the application and actual executable tests”
“It works reasonably well, but without a direct source map from the rules to the code, you still end up with a very difficult-to-understand codebase.”
“I really like gherkin for agentic engineering, it's very clarifying”
“I really like gherkin for agentic engineering, it's very clarifying.”
“it has gnarly syntax, no typing and bad abstractions”
“I prefer that to the 'verbose' original syntax.”
“The nice thing about writing acceptance criteria this way is that they become executable and analyzable.”
“Gherkin is kind of nice though.”
“That works great in practice”
“check out cucumber / gherkin - very old school regex-to-code plain english kind of system”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.