Context Engineering

active

Origin: @tobi (Tobi Lütke, Shopify CEO), June 19, 2025

The preferred successor to 'prompt engineering.' Frames the core skill as providing all the context for a task to be plausibly solvable by the LLM — not just writing prompts.

Usage

Use instead of 'prompt engineering' when discussing the skill of working with LLMs at a professional level. Signals currency: using 'prompt engineering' in 2026 reads as slightly dated.

Mutations & variants

Context engineering vs. prompt engineering (the debate tree) Tobi named DSPy as his 'context engineering tool of choice' in follow-up posts

Cross-platform escapes

LangChain blog: 'The Rise of Context Engineering'
Simon Willison: covered and adopted the frame
Job descriptions: 'context engineering' appearing in AI engineer JDs
AI engineering course titles

References

Original tweet: https://x.com/tobi/status/1935533422589399127

Shelf life: Active through 2026 at minimum

Tobi's 'practitioner CEO' credibility made this land — not just anyone can rename a field. The move worked because 'context engineering' genuinely describes what practitioners are doing better than 'prompt engineering.'

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