Google releases elephant-goldfish plugin to enforce specification-first AI coding practices

Google has made available the Elephant-Goldfish Model (EGM) plugin, a new framework designed to act as a design and review layer for AI coding agents. This system mandates that an agent first generates a detailed specification before any code is written. Subsequently, stateless subagents, referred to as Goldfish, examine this draft specification for potential flaws, a method inspired by Dave Rensin’s essay on elephants and goldfish. The EGM plugin is distributed under an Apache 2.0 license and is not a new language model itself, though Google notes it addresses issues like AI slop and session context collapse. The architecture features the Elephant, which maintains project context and drafts the specification without writing code, while the Goldfish agents review the draft. The core workflow includes a /egm-drift-report command, recommended for weekly execution, and a review skill involving five sequential stages. Support for various tools is available, including Antigravity CLI and App, Claude Code, Claude Cowork, Codex, ChatGPT, omp, and Muse. Notably, Claude Code requires version 2.1.271 or newer, and reviewers using it are limited to Read, Grep, and Glob tools. The plugin's GitHub repository, project site, and Google Open Source blog post provide further details on this system.