Context Engineering Our Way to Long-Horizon Agents: LangChain’s Harrison Chase
Source
youtube.com
Author
Sequoia Capital
Date
Why it matters
Explains why you cannot predict the context windowThe maximum amount of text a model can consider at once — its working memory for the current conversation or task.Full definition → at step 14 of an AI agentAn AI system that doesn't just answer once but works toward a goal in a loop — taking actions, reading the results, and deciding what to do next.Full definition → run and why tracing is the primary debugging tool for long-horizon agents.
Terms in this piece · Glossary
context engineering — Deciding what an agent sees at each step — the discipline that replaced prompt engineering once context windows got large enough to fill badly.
AI agent — An AI system that doesn't just answer once but works toward a goal in a loop — taking actions, reading the results, and deciding what to do next.
context window — The maximum amount of text a model can consider at once — its working memory for the current conversation or task.
LLM — A large language model — the neural network behind tools like Claude and ChatGPT, trained on huge amounts of text to predict what comes next.
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