Building a Regulatory SMS Validation Service Entirely with AI
Industry
Telecommunications
Project
SMS Validation Service
Client
EU based
Our Role
AI-Powered Software Development
Technologies
Claude and Claude Code
No line of code was written or edited by a human. Specifications, direction, and review stayed with the team. The AI produced the code, the tests, and the manuals.
Yves Basquet
CTO
Challenge
A telecom operator was under regulatory pressure to deploy a business-critical SMS validation service, fast. A conventional build wasn’t going to cut it.
- Sat in the live message path, every single SMS routed through it in real time
- Required 99.999% availability across multiple sites with zero tolerance for downtime
- Strict security rules, no access to internal repos, no credential exposure
- Full audit trail on every validation, mandatory for regulatory compliance
- Estimated 10 to 14 person-weeks using traditional development
Solution
CloudTern applied its Spec-Driven AI Development methodology, where the client’s team owned the “what” and AI handled the “how.” Specifications drove everything downstream.
- Human experts authored functional specs and architecture decisions
- Claude Code generated all application code, test suites, and operational documentation
- Every artifact was fully traceable back to the original specification
- When a performance issue surfaced in testing, the fix went into the spec and the service was regenerated, no patching, no drift
- Standard QA, performance testing, and deployment governance remained unchanged
Key Benefits
Speed Without Shortcuts
From a 490-hour conventional estimate down to 39 hours of human effort. The team focused on thinking, not typing.
Cost That Makes You Look Twice
Total AI tooling spend: 43 euros. The scarce resource shifted from developer hours to clear thinking about requirements.
Quality You Can Prove
Zero failing tests across 675 test cases. 3.1 ms p99 latency against an 800 ms requirement. Passed standard QA and performance testing without exception.
Knowledge That Outlasts the Team
Specs, code, and documentation always describe the same version. What the system does is written down, not carried by the people who built it.
