There is a category error running loose in our industry right now, and it is costing teams real money.
The error is treating vibe coding and agentic engineering as the same activity performed at different levels of enthusiasm. They are not the same activity. They have different units of work, different failure modes, different artifacts, and, this is the part that matters, different economics when you point them at a production payment system that moves other people's money.
I build distributed systems for a living. Lately most of that has been payment infrastructure, which is the least forgiving place I know of to be wrong. Over the last while I have converged on a workflow that is roughly two-thirds spec-driven development and one-third loop engineering, implemented as three Claude Code skills that hand off to each other.
This post is that workflow, plus the things it broke that nobody warned me about.
The distinction, stated sharply
