ACI-014: Context Engineering vs Prompt Engineering

Thesis

Prompt engineering is what you say in a single interaction. Context engineering is the entire information architecture -- CLAUDE.md, memory files, skills, file structure, git history, session state -- that shapes every interaction. Context engineering is the more durable and more impactful skill, but it is almost never taught because the tooling is too new for the pedagogy to exist.

Story

The term "prompt engineering" dominated the AI discourse from 2023 onward. Courses, certifications, and job titles proliferated around the skill of writing effective prompts. For single-turn interactions, this makes sense: the prompt is the only lever.