Prompt Engineering is Dead. Long Live Context-as-Code

Since the early days of GenAI, when ChatGPT launched in late 2022, we began using prompt engineering to direct chatbots (and later LLMs) with human language instructions to provide us answers to questions or take actions (in a high-level…) In 2025, companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic began releasing a new agentic concept called “AI Agent”, an autonomous system that uses an AI model as its "brain" to perceive an environment, make independent decisions, and execute multi-step tasks using digital tools. Unlike passive chatbots that just answer questions, an agent can plan its own workflow, run commands, and browse the web to achieve a specific goal without constant human supervision. In this blog post, I will explain the concept of Context-as-Code and share some coding examples. Introducing Context-as-Code Traditional prompting is a one-way street. You type out your instructions, send them off, and that text never changes. AI agents operate completely differently. Because they work on their own, every action they take creates a mountain of new data. Every time an agent opens a file, checks an error, or runs a tool, it adds more information to the pile, which quickly overwhelms a standard chat screen. Context-as-Code treats the agent like a stateless compute engine. Instead of a massive text prompt, we use version-controlled files ( CLAUDE.md , AGENTS.md ) to establish structural boundaries, separating the permanent project rules from the temporary, dynamic session memory. Context-as-Code transforms loose AI prompts into version-controlled engineering assets by using structured Markdown files to establish permanent, auditable boundaries directly within a project repository. The Discovery Stage (Onboarding the Agent) Before an agent writes a single line of code, it must parse the overall project layout. These files act as the "map" for an incoming AI. llms.txt Serves as a lightweight text directory mapped out in Markdown format. Placed at the root of a project or webs