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Answering your questions about business and technology
Question
I keep hearing different people say that “prompt engineering is dead”. Is it dead? And, if so, what replaced it?
~ Kevin
Answer
Hi Kevin,
This is a charged topic, so I will give my opinion and back away slowly…
No, prompt engineering is not dead. There, I said it.
You don’t have to take my word for it. How many AI tools do you use that don’t have ANY type of prompting interface? At some point you have to ask a question or give instructions. Even if you put the “prompt” in a document, you still have to write the prompt.
Two of the common things that have “replaced” prompt engineering (according to people) are context engineering and harness engineering. Those are both worthy of their own posts (or courses) but, in short they either include the prompt (context engineering) or are everything besides the prompt (harness engineering). Both still involve a prompt.
I will say that most of the recent models require more than just a prompt for anything beyond simple information retrieval. Also, a lot of things that used to only be in a prompt are better suited in separate files now (i.e., persona, examples, etc., in markdown files).
As you can, hopefully, see, the tools are changing quickly and often. The main takeaway here is that things, like prompt engineering, haven’t gone away. Good output requires the existing skills plus more (i.e. prompt engineering plus harness engineering).
Hope that helps.
~ Damien
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