# Context engineering

The 2026 successor to ‘prompt engineering’: systematically deciding what a model sees — instructions, examples, retrieved documents, tool outputs, memory — within a finite context window. Quality of context beats cleverness of prompt.

Canonical: https://robauto.ai/learn/ai-architecture/8

_Advanced AI Architecture: Strategy, Stack & Daily Practice — lesson 8 of 20 (DEFINITION)_

The 2026 successor to ‘prompt engineering’: systematically deciding what a model sees — instructions, examples, retrieved documents, tool outputs, memory — within a finite context window. Quality of context beats cleverness of prompt.

Source: [Anthropic — Effective context engineering](https://www.anthropic.com/engineering/effective-context-engineering-for-ai-agents?utm_source=robauto)

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