2022–2023: Prompt Engineering
📝 RACE
Role
Action
Context
Expectation
📋 RISEN
Role
Instructions
Steps
End goal
Narrowing
🎯 APE
Action
Purpose
Expectation
These checklists taught what information models need—the same principles now applied at system scale.
Same ingredients,
bigger kitchen
bigger kitchen
2024–2025: Context Engineering
Pantry
Knowledge Bases
Long-term storage: docs, embeddings, vector databases
Prep Station
RAG / Retrieval
Retrieved Docs
📄 Relevant
Vector Search
🔍 Semantic
Recipe Book
Instructions & Features
User-Defined
System Prompt
📖 Custom
Persona / Role
📖 Custom
LLM Features
Reasoning Mode
🔄 Extended
Tool Use
⚙️ Enabled
Connections
Tools & External Services
Web Search
🌐 Results
Image Creation
🎨 Generated
Code Execution
💻 Output
App Connectors
🔌 MCP/APIs
Counter
Context Window — What the LLM Sees
Drag items here to build the context window
Memory
Stored Context
Long-term
User Memory
🧠 Persistent
Short-term
Chat History
💬 Session
User Message
📝 Current
User Query
→
Orchestrate Context
→
←
Generate
iterates until complete
→
Output