Anthropic’s New Playbook for AI Agents Is “Context Engineering”

They finally explained why AI gets dumber the longer you talk to it and it’s a problem we can actually solve.

You ever been in a deep conversation with an AI agent, thinking you’re finally getting somewhere.. and then it just completely loses the plot?

It starts forgetting what you told it ten messages ago. It gets stuck in a loop, asking the same dumb questions. It feels like its brain is just… full. And you’re sitting there thinking, “I thought you were supposed to be smart?”

Yeah, me too. It’s frustrating.

For years, the high priests of AI have told us the solution is “prompt engineering.” Just write a better prompt! Find the magic words! Give it the perfect set of instructions!

Well, I just read a piece from Anthropic called “Effective context engineering for AI agents,” and it feels like waking up from a dream.

We’ve been looking at the wrong thing. Entirely.

The Real Problem Isn’t the Prompt, It’s the AI’s Entire Brain

Let’s get this straight. Prompt engineering isn’t useless. It’s just a tiny, tiny piece of a much bigger puzzle.