Specification Portability Across LLM Development Agents: Cross-Agent Compatibility in Specification-Driven Software Migration

Abstract:This paper investigates cross-agent specification portability using Oracle-to-PostgreSQL migration as a controlled software transformation task. The study combines two experimental stages. First, a specification-first migration pipeline was evaluated on 1,006 PL/SQL files, of which 623 were successfully regenerated and 380 generated scripts executed successfully in PostgreSQL 16. Second, cross-agent experiments were conducted on a dataset of 1,802 Oracle scripts with corresponding PostgreSQL implementations using Amazon Kiro, Google Gemini, and GitHub Copilot, with Claude Code and Cursor included in the initial single-agent evaluation. Native and foreign specifications were assessed using Token F1, exact match, SQL syntax validity, AST exact match, AST mean similarity, and immediate runnability. The results show that specification size alone does not predict implementation quality and that cross-agent transfer can produce substantial agent-dependent degradation. The strongest replicated case occurred when Gemini directly consumed a Kiro-origin specification, producing a Token F1 of 0.035, SQL syntax validity of 2.33%, and AST mean similarity of 0.015. Rewriting substantially improved Gemini in the tested configuration, compression did not provide a universal benefit, and retrieval-augmented ingestion was the only common strategy represented on the per-agent Pareto frontiers of both Gemini and Copilot. The findings suggest that specifications in heterogeneous SDD workflows should not automatically be treated as agent-neutral artifacts and motivate explicit consideration of specification portability, agent-specific interpretation, and retrieval-based access in multi-agent software engineering.

Software Engineering (cs.SE); Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI); Logic in Computer Science (cs.LO)

arXiv:2608.21208 [cs.SE]

(or arXiv:2608.21208v1 [cs.SE] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2608.21208 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)

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