Context Engineering: How to Build Agentic Systems that Operationalize Taste

Context Engineering.

I was writing about context engineering 2 years ago (and thought I was a crazy person talking to myself in an echo camber), but its now taking off.

My contact:   / jacob-dietle  

Here's the TL:DR;

its currently being talked about as a rebrand/iteration on prompt engineering (I personally disagree with my version)

its exploding on tech twitter and AI circles (watch the vid to see the trend chart)

there are a lot different people contributing to it now, so each person their own take

So what is it though?



MY POV: I think of context engineering as the discipline of deeply understanding the WHY of every input, action and output of an LLM-based system/Agentic Architecture.

You can think of it as the more meta-version of prompt engineering.


It isn't just about the specific prompt instructions and variables, its about:

what context sources you use, why and how each source included or not (just as important) shifts what outcomes will be created

deeply considering the why (why are we building this, why is it valuable, to who?)

leveraging this understanding to build Context Architecture that takes real expertise and taste and reflects that subjective excellence in a real AI system that can scale


In the video I walk through my 3 level framework for leveraging context engineering to effectively design agentic systems that:

1. consistently operationalize your expertise/taste

2. AND solve for real business value.

It is about solving for real end value, not technical complexity.


If you want help with deploying context engineering principles for your org I am starting to incorporate it into client engagements (I've realized its effectively what I've been doing already just wasn't calling it that - very grateful the term has come back around haha)


And curious to hear what your version of context engineering is?


P.S. my original write on context eng if you want the reallyyy philosophical version of it:


https://jacobdietle.substack.com/p/th...


P.P.S. the video features what I'd call APPLIED Context Engineering