䷿ "Context engineering is the systematic discipline of designing, constructing, and delivering a complete informational environment to an AI model prior to generation." - Antonio Gulli

Hello Reader,

Even the best prompts will fail without the right context.

Giving AI backstory and reference material will create a landscape that is suitable to your scenario.

The art of Context Engineering is providing enough material to an LLM so that it can provide you with better results.

In a session with ChatGPT or Copilot, you can get better results by having a conversation about what you want to do, before you want to do it. "Tell me about..." your topic will get the LLM to develop it's own context. This reliably improves your results.

Claude tests with and without context engineering found a 22% improvement in quality when extra context was added - especially when the prompt involved strategic decision making.

Slides & Replay

As you may know, every month I host the Christchurch AI Meetup.

On the First Monday of every month, all the local AI enthusiasts get together to share a few drinks, a few laughs, and a few conversations. We feature a couple of speakers, and talk about what's been happening in the fast-moving world of AI.

Now we are livestreaming!

Thanks to Greg Dickson of AI Search Marketing, we now livestream our events. You can watch the replay of the most recent meetup below.

Andy Masters of Custom D shared an interactive demo to showcase a Hierarchical Reasoning Model, and I spoke about Context Engineering.

Here are the slides, and below are the copy/paste prompts I used:

TAB 1:

Write a 100-word story about an underdog who wins.

TAB 2:

List 3 underdog character ideas.

Create a short plot outline for the most interesting one.

Now write a 100-word story based on that character and outline.

This first game showcases the difference between a prompt with and without context.

What are some good ways to set New Year’s resolutions?

Read 5 articles from https://caelanhuntress.com/tag/resolutions and then answer: What are some good ways to set New Year’s resolutions?

Compare the responses from Prompts 1 and 2. What changed, and how does added context improve the result?

This series of prompts will clearly describe the advantages of context.

TAB 1:

Write a short, inspiring motivational speech for a group of students.

TAB 2:

What are 3 key messages students need to hear to stay motivated?

Turn those messages into a short speech outline.

Now write a full speech using that outline in an inspiring tone.

This final game shows you the difference in quality, when you have triple the token budget.

Practice Coaching with AI

This January, I am hosting a free weekly AI Coaching Power Hour.

💡 AI Coaching Power Hour

This interactive Zoom session is designed to give you one hour of focused reflection, a gentle push forward, and a supportive community to help you grow.

Thanks for registering for this event! I look forward to seeing you there.

4 Mondays in January 3-4pm NZ time // Sundays 6-7pm Pacific time

Download Calendar Invite

🗞️ New AI News This Week

OpenAI declared Code Red to respond to Google's Gemini 3
Google released a bunch of other updates in November
IBM acquired Confluent for $11 billion for faster data streaming

🗓️ 2026 is coming!

We are coming up to the end of the year! That means my upcoming Annual Review and New Year's Resolutions posts will be published in a few werks.

For more than ten years, I have published these 2 long reflective and prospective posts on my personal website. You can review them at the links above.

This year, I am considering hosting an Annual Review Workshop on Zoom, on (or around) the afternoon of New Year's Eve.

Would you be interested in joining me?

Click here to signal your interest.