S2. Ep10 - The New Rules of Prompt Engineering in 2026

Episode notes

We first covered prompt engineering on the podcast almost exactly a year ago, and honestly, nearly everything we said has changed. So this week, Katie and Noel revisit the topic from scratch to break down what actually works in 2026. The big shift is from rigid prompt structures to what we're calling context engineering. Instead of obsessing over the perfect sentence, it's about giving AI the right information upfront. We walk through how to use one conversation purely to build context, then bring that into your actual working conversation. It's the technique I used to build Clyde, and the results speak for themselves. We also get into why JSON format produces dramatically better structured outputs, why telling AI what you don't want is just as important as telling it what you do, and why those "steal my prompts" posts are still terrible advice. Plus we compare how Claude and ChatGPT handle vague prompts completely differently, which changes how you should approach each one. Oh, and we've got a Project Clyde update. Early access is live, and we've managed a 66% reduction in token usage since the beta. Pretty pleased with that one.

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