thinking-ooda

1# OODA Loop
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3**Core rule:** For reversible moves under time pressure, act on ~70% confidence, then immediately re-observe. Cycle faster than the situation compounds; a late perfect plan loses to a fast loop.
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5## When to Use
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7- Incident response, outage, or ongoing degradation where state is still moving.
8- Debugging a moving target (intermittent failure, live traffic shift).
9- Any time-bounded decision where waiting for full certainty costs more than a reversible action.
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11## When NOT to Use
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13- The situation is static and you have time — deliberate analysis or a hypothesis differential wins.
14- The next action is irreversible or high blast-radius — raise the evidence bar; 70% is not enough.
15- You can cheaply localize the cause (read the failing diff, log, or metric) — test that hypothesis directly instead of looping in the dark.
16- There is no time pressure and no changing environment — OODA adds churn without value.
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18## Procedure
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201. **Observe (time-boxed):** gather the cheapest high-signal state now — metrics, logs, alerts, recent deploys/config, and feedback from the last action. Cap the window; do not collect forever.
212. **Orient:** match observations to a pattern and form **≥2** candidate explanations. Update or discard the mental model when data contradicts it; refuse single-hypothesis lock.
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