Context engineering with Dex Horthy

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Knowing how LLM contexts work and how to work around context limitations – aka “context engineering” – is becoming more important for software engineers working with LLMs. Let’s look into what works and what doesn’t, today.

In this episode of The Pragmatic Engineer podcast, I sit down with the CEO and cofounder of HumanLayer, Dex Horthy, who coined the term “context engineering”. We discuss the ideas behind this context engineering, harness engineering, loop engineering, software factories, why his approach to AI-assisted software development has evolved, and how HumanLayer is helping engineering teams automate more of the software development lifecycle without sacrificing code quality.

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Timestamps

00:00 Intro

03:35 Dex’s path into tech

05:36 Early work in platform engineering

07:30 Replicated

13:26 Metalytics

14:38 12-factor agents

20:29 Context engineering

25:40 Harness engineering

28:13 Context overload

32:47 Loop engineering

46:36 Software factories before and after AI

52:35 Automation limits

57:20 Three options for automating

1:01:02 RPI framework

1:06:18 Intentional compaction

1:13:50 Token harder vs. token smarter

1:18:46 AI slop

1:21:17 HumanLayer

1:31:11 Book recommendation

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The Pragmatic Engineer deepdives relevant for this episode:

• How Uber uses AI for development: inside look

• Are AI agents actually slowing us down?

• AI Tooling for Software Engineers in 2026

• Vibe Coding as a software engineer

• How Claude Code is built

• AI Engineering in the real world

• The AI Engineering Stack

• How AI-assisted coding will change software engineering: hard truths

• The creator of OpenClaw: "I ship code I don't read"

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