Context engineering refers to systematically guiding model behavior to achieve the desired output effect by designing input content such as prompts, examples, knowledge structures, and conversation history without changing the language model's underlying parameters. It was first mentioned publicly by Tobi Lütke (Shopify CEO).

Context Engineering is essentially the process of structurally designing and optimizing the input context of large language models. It marks a paradigm shift in LLM practice, from "prompt engineering" to systematic "context engineering."