---
title: "Prompts vs. Context"
date: 2025-06-25
author: Drew Breunig
description: "Prompts are disposable requests written for chatbots. Contexts are evolving instructions curated for use in applications."
tags: ["agents", "llm", "ai", "prompt engineer", "context engineering", "context management"]
url: https://www.dbreunig.com/2025/06/25/prompts-vs-context.html
---

I'm not the only one thinking about how context management is the key to good LLM applications. Since publishing our post detailing [how long contexts fail](https://www.dbreunig.com/2025/06/22/how-contexts-fail-and-how-to-fix-them.html), a conversation emerged regarding the term "context engineering," compared to "prompt engineering." (Let's be clear...I had *nothing* to do with starting the debate, it's just a happy coincidence...)

Today, [Andrej Karpathy weighed in](https://x.com/karpathy/status/1937902205765607626), supporting "context engineering":

> People associate prompts with short task descriptions you'd give an LLM in your day-to-day use. When in every industrial-strength LLM app, context engineering is the delicate art and science of filling the context window with just the right information for the next step.

As usual, Karpathy grasps a blurry idea and seems to snap it into focus, with his authority, insight, and clear writing. Writing about [long context fails](https://www.dbreunig.com/2025/06/22/how-contexts-fail-and-how-to-fix-them.html), more than once I'd write the word "prompt" somewhere before quickly replacing it with "context." When prompts are part of software, they're context. As an ecosystem, I think we all arrived there at once.

I am a nerd for terminology and selecting the right word. Anytime I find myself debating terms, seeking to map out the detail they bring to our discussions, I end up making a table, like so:

!['Prompts' versus 'Context'](/img/prompts_v_contexts.jpg)

Note that one isn't better than another! They're just *different*. As we map out our emerging domain, our language lags behind. We coin terms, negotiate them, and eventually it all settles down.

After all, as [Stewart Brand said](https://www.dbreunig.com/2024/08/22/where-the-future-is-being-made.html), "If you want to know where the future is being made, look for where language is being invented and lawyers are congregating."

------