Why You're Burning Tokens in Three Turns
Operators on X keep saying they're four turns into an AI session and the context window's full. The replies miss the actual problem — they've been taught the wrong physics.
Writing
Context Engineering Is Just Context Discipline
Context engineering is the new buzzword. The skill underneath is older and simpler: people burn their AI allowance in two turns and blame the model, when the model is fine — they're paying for synthesis they could have externalised. That's context discipline, and it's the entire skill.
The API Without a Front End
Government departments are funded to collect data, not to present it. The gap between what the state holds and what an ordinary person can use is structural, durable, and almost entirely unclaimed.
The API Selection Pressure
Suppliers with APIs get wired into the pipeline. Suppliers still emailing CSV files get checked when someone remembers. Not preference. Physics.
The Imperial Rise of the Context Engineer
Prompt engineering is the wrong name. Context engineering — what I've been calling ingeniculture for a year — is the practice of building the room the LLM stands in.
Why Your AI Workflow Produces Fluent Nonsense
Most AI workflows are prompts applied to empty rooms. This is what an operating system looks like instead — document tiers, named characters, a wiki the model can read, and a boot sequence that loads context before the first prompt arrives.
Who Is Holding the Mirror?
The AI reflects whatever substrate it meets. The dangerous case isn't where it refuses to answer. It's where it answers fluently and nobody in the room can tell it's wrong.
The Digital Trail That Speaks For Itself
Every profession that charges for opaque expertise is about to discover the trail was always there. AI doesn't invent evidence — it surfaces what's already readable. The age of 'we did the work, trust us' is ending.
Does Your Website Pass the Grep Test?
I'd never heard of grep and I've been building websites for twenty-seven years. It turns out the simplest operation in computing — searching your own content — is the one most platforms make impossible.
The LLM Test: Who Does the LLM Think You Are?
I fed the same article to four frontier AI models. Three returned confident summaries — of articles I hadn't written. They didn't misread the content. They didn't know who I was. The insight that survived had vocabulary with no escape route.