TriCo—Triple Co-piloting of Implementation, Specification and Tests

Paper in proceeding, 2022

This white paper presents the vision of a novel methodology for developing safety-critical software, which is inspired by late developments in learning based co-piloting of implementations. The methodology, called TriCo, integrates formal methods with learning based approaches to co-pilot the agile, simultaneous development of three artefacts: implementation, specification, and tests. Whenever the user changes any of these, a TriCo empowered IDE would suggest changes to the other two artefacts in such a way that the three are kept consistent. The user has the final word on whether the changes are accepted, rejected, or modified. In the latter case, consistency will be checked again and re-established. We discuss the emerging trends which put the community in a good position to realise this vision, describe the methodology and workflow, as well as challenges and possible solutions for the realisation of TriCo.