Vibing, Harness and OODA loop

Vibe coding and LLM-assisted development are not new phenomena — they mirror the old 'weekend PoC' problem where skipping Observe and Orient phases creates an illusion of speed. Using the OODA loop (Observe, Orient, Decide, Act) as a framework, the author argues that LLMs accelerate the Act phase but do nothing to speed up Observation, which still requires a proper test harness. A practical example is shown: adding OpenTelemetry observability to the Emmett framework, using Node.js native test tools, execa, and Docker Compose to build a reproducible, automated verification harness. The core message is that fast iteration only works sustainably when paired with automated feedback mechanisms — without a harness, you're just generating unverified output faster.