From GenAI to Agentic AI: The Evolution of Context Engineering

View profile for Kumar GN

AI Leader | Author| GenAI Evangelist | Translating Emerging Tech into Enterprise Impact

From Classic GenAI to Agentic AI: How Context Engineering Must Evolve 🔹 In the GenAI era, context engineering was about optimizing prompts and retrieval pipelines: Build a better prompt. Chunk and rank documents. Fit the right data into a limited context window. Effective, yes. But limited. With the rise of Agentic AI, these strategies no longer suffice. Context is no longer static “fuel” for a single model run — it becomes the operating system for perception, reasoning, and collaboration. Here’s how the shift looks: Classical GenAI → Agentic AI Static prompts → Dynamic context flows: context evolves as agents act and learn. Single-agent view → Multi-agent collaboration: context must be shared, but not polluted. Token optimization → Memory hierarchies: episodic, semantic, and long-term layers working together. Manual metadata → Autonomous signals: agents infer freshness, reliability, and intent in real time. Compression → Negotiation: summaries adapt to audiences — the agent itself, peers, or the human in the loop. The implication? Context is no longer an accessory to AI. It is the fundamental basis that determines whether autonomous agents can deliver business value. As enterprises explore Agentic AI, the real differentiator will not be model choice alone — it will be context design. Those who treat context as a living system (with governance, adaptability, and feedback loops) will unlock autonomy that is robust, compliant, and cost-efficient. Do you see context engineering as the new frontier of AI system design — or are we still underestimating its strategic importance? #AgenticAI #AI #RAG #ContextEngineering #Evaluation #AppliedAI #GenerativeAI #CXO #Leadership #Systemengineering

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