At a typical automotive OEM, only about 20% of engineering time goes to writing code. The remaining 80% disappears into documentation, traceability work, and keeping artefacts in sync across siloed tools. In safety-critical development, every requirement must link to a test case, every test case must trace back to an architecture decision, and every change must be auditable against ISO 26262 and ASPICE.

The way most teams handle this today - spreadsheets, separate ALM tools, PDFs, and manual hand-offs - creates exactly the disconnect that slows development and introduces risk. Maximilian Pabinger, co-founder at useblocks, describes what that looks like in practice: "The people building the software are doers. Requirements and traceability? Someone else handles that part. You end up with siloing - and that siloing causes real problems the moment an interface changes and nobody downstream knows about it."
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Requirements as code: the useblocks approach

The solutions from useblocks close the requirements gap with their open-source framework, Sphinx-Needs, which treats every requirement, test case, and specification as a typed, linkable object - stored in Git alongside source code, validated on every build. Maximilian Pabinger explains: "We want to standardise the artefacts so they live as close to the source code as possible - thereby combining system of work with system of record. Links are created and checked automatically. Documentation becomes a build output, not a separate task."‍

When a test case is correctly annotated in Sphinx-Needs, it appears in the documentation automatically and traceability to standards like ISO 26262 is maintained as a natural consequence. The open-source framework also connects to legacy tools like DOORS and Jira via ReqIF so that existing artefacts and processes can migrate gradually. "Few projects start in a greenfield. You always have existing systems, existing formats. The goal is bidirectional traceability - and to bring that traceability closer to where the code actually lives." Maximilian Pabinger, co-founder at useblocks.
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Vehicle as code: adding an executable layer with RemotiveLabs

RemotiveLabs adds an execution layer to having the requirements and artefacts closer to the code. RemotiveTopology virtualises the E/E architecture so test cases run against a reproducible, versioned vehicle model in CI. The vehicle signal database, ECU behaviour, and test recordings are all treated as code and text files - cloneable, runnable on a laptop or in a CI pipeline.

"When you treat the vehicle topology as code, you get the same properties you expect from software - version control, reproducibility, and the ability to run anywhere. That's what makes continuous integration across the full system actually possible with our tooling" explains Jan Kronquist, engineering lead at RemotiveLabs.

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The result: A foundation for writing test cases with AI

Put requirements as code and vehicle as code together, and you get asingle, linked, version-controlled system where every requirement connects to atest case, every test case runs against a real vehicle model, and every changeis traceable end to end - automatically.

Sphinx-Needs keeps requirements, test cases, and code in one version-controlled system. Jan Kronquist, RemotiveLabs, shows how that connects to RemotiveTopology - so every requirement traces to a test case that actually runs against your virtual vehicle.

This is also what makes AI useful in safety-critical development. When requirements, virtual E/E architectures, and vehicle signal data are all linked objects in a graph, an AI agent can reason about the full system not just the code in front of it. "In the area of AI, this is especially useful. Impact analysis, traceability checks - these aren't only for humans anymore. Because all the information is linked, we built ubCode on top of our open-source model to turn that structure into a machine-readable intent layer agents can run on. In safety-critical projects, that lets AI actually understand the system and that creates a major advantage," says Maximilian Pabinger, co-founder, useblocks.

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