Level 5: Context Engineering — Briefing
Context Engineering is the art of giving an LLM the optimal input. You will learn to structure prompts as reusable templates (XML tags), produce consistent outputs with examples (few-shot), integrate external knowledge (RAG), and make the LLM reason step by step (chain of thought). After this level you can combine all five techniques in a single prompt.
Skill Tree
Section titled “Skill Tree”
What You’ll Learn
Section titled “What You’ll Learn”- The Template: Structure system prompts as reusable, parameterised templates with XML tags
- Basic Prompting: Turn vague prompts into clear, structured instructions using a prompt template based on Anthropic best practices
- Exemplars (Few-Shot Learning): Show the LLM what you expect with concrete input-output examples
- Retrieval (RAG): Dynamically load external knowledge and inject it as context into the prompt
- Chain of Thought: Make the LLM reason step by step before it answers
Why This Matters
Section titled “Why This Matters”“The hottest new programming skill is not prompting, it’s context engineering.” — Simon Willison
An LLM only knows what you give it. Too little context means hallucinations. Too much context means noise, high costs, and lost focus. Context Engineering is the difference between a chatbot that guesses and an AI system that works reliably.
The concrete problem: Without structured prompts you write a new prompt for every API call via copy-paste. The results are inconsistent, untestable, and hard to maintain. With Context Engineering you build a system that delivers consistent, reproducible results across 20 different calls.
Prerequisites
Section titled “Prerequisites”- Level 1: AI SDK Basics — you must be comfortable with
generateTextandstreamText - Basic understanding of what an LLM is — you know that an LLM generates text based on input
Skip hint: You already work with structured system prompts, use XML tags, and have experience with few-shot prompting? Then jump straight to the Boss Fight and check whether you can combine all the concepts.
Project Directory: Continue working in your project directory from Level 1. Create a separate TypeScript file for each challenge (e.g.,
challenge-5-1.ts).
Challenges
Section titled “Challenges”Boss Fight
Section titled “Boss Fight”Build a Documentation Assistant: A system that loads documents from a local source (RAG), works with a structured prompt template, uses exemplars for consistent answers, and employs chain of thought for complex questions. All five building blocks in one system.