Karpathy Said Kill Prompt Engineering. Here’s What He Actually Meant.
Andrej Karpathy proposed a shift from "prompt engineering" to "context engineering," arguing that the former term inaccurately represents the complex task of building production AI applications. He clarified that real-world AI systems rely on dynamically assembling a context window from various sources like system instructions, retrieved documents, and conversation history, rather than just simple user prompts. This assembly process, which Karpathy deems the true engineering challenge, is crucial for optimal model performance and is distinct from merely crafting task descriptions. AI
IMPACT Reframes the core challenge in building production AI applications from prompt phrasing to managing dynamic context assembly.