PHPspecs are specifications about the public API. They tell what you can do when using this class. It's not TDD, it's BDD :) You don't have a first step in BDD, at least not the way you expect it to be. In BDD, the only thing you do is describing what you can do with the class.

Testing if a class has a specific classname doesn't belong to the public API, it's the start of the public API.

To make my point stronger: This test isn't included in any spec of PHPSpec itself: https://github.com/phpspec/phpspec/tree/master/spec/PhpSpec Only to test that a class implements a specific interface, which is exactly what you should do, as the interface is part of the public API.