Alex Prompter (@alex_prompter) “There are layers of working with AI. Prompt engineering. Context engineering. Ha” — TopicDigg

There are layers of working with AI. Prompt engineering. Context engineering. Harness engineering. Loop engineering. Layer 1 is prompt engineering. What you type into the chat window. How you word the instruction, what you ask for, what you tell it to avoid. This is where everyone starts. It matters, but few people go further. Layer 2 is context engineering. Everything the model sees before your prompt. System instructions, reference files, conversation history, examples of good output. A mediocre prompt with great context beats a great prompt with no context every time. Layer 3 is harness engineering. The code around the model. Tool routing, verification steps, retry logic, structured outputs. This is what makes AI reliable instead of just impressive. When the model checks its own work before returning it to you, that's the harness. Layer 4 is loop engineering. The system runs itself. You set a goal and a stop condition. The loop prompts the model, checks the output, adjusts, and repeats without you. This is where you stop being the bottleneck entirely. Each layer wraps the one before it. Better prompts help, but without context the model guesses. Context helps, but without a harness the output is inconsistent. A harness helps, but without a loop you're still manually triggering every run. Full setup guide for all 4 layers using Fable 5 below.