AI engineering layers
Context engineering
Definition
Selecting and organizing what goes into an AI model’s context window, such as instructions, documents, conversation history, and tool results, so it has the right information for the task.
Visual example
Prepared kitchen = context engineering
The kitchen connection
Think of setting out the right recipes and ingredients on the chef’s counter.
The illustration connects the AI idea to something familiar. Follow the subject, the action, and the result to see how it works.
- 01 · Who or what
- Prepared kitchen = context engineering
- 02 · What happens
- Sets tools memory facts and rules
- 03 · The result
- Makes AI work reliably
Why it matters
It shows that reliable AI depends on designing the whole information environment, not just writing a clever prompt.