It’s time for prompt engineers to step aside. Context engineers are taking over.
Big consultancies have stopped talking about model options and now talk about the importance of judgment, defining workflows, and making activities predictable.
The technology at the centre will do what it is told.
But that’s not enough.
To do the right things it needs more information.
Is the solution just more contextual information – policies, guidance, guidelines and guardrails – or is there still a role for humans in an AI-driven workflow?
I think there is, because the real context is rarely explicitly written down
Instead it is constantly constructed, reconstructured and negotiated by the people who are involved in a situation.
If we don’t know what people want and need we won’t know what to ask the machines to make.
Humans are needed, first to understand the situation
Then to get machines to take the right actions.
Handcrafted insight 