Learn Context Engineering

I was building my first mobile app, stuck on a bug. So I did what you did back then. Back before AI bots knew everything and forgave everything.

People there had no patience for others wasting their time. I saw them get torn apart in the comments. What have you even tried!? RTFM! This is a duplicate question!

I never got flamed myself, because I couldn’t stand the idea of appearing inept.

So I didn’t just fire off my question. I did the work to show the exact error. Identify the smallest bit of code in question. Offer other solutions that didn’t work.

It was while writing that last part I realized there was one thing I hadn’t tried.

It was the fix. I closed the site and never posted the question.

Charles Kettering said a problem well stated is a problem half solved. I’d known the quote before. But I still remember that night when it actually hit home. And the dozen times after.

AI will never force you to think. It has infinite patience and zero standards. You can mumble a half-formed question at it, get a confident answer to the wrong problem, and never know it.

Before AI, the only thing that ever caught a lazy question was a human on the other end, someone whose bar you had to clear. And reaching for that bar is what made you sharper.

So put the friction of thinking back in.

Next time you’re stuck and about to pose a half-assed question to the machine, write a better question. As if a stranger who owes you nothing is about to read it and judge you for it.

Name the exact problem. Break it down. Make it good enough that a lazy version would embarrass you. Either way, you’ll better understand the answer you get back, and you’ll get a better one out of the AI too.

Congrats. You just learned context engineering.