Lessons from the AI Engineer’s World Fair on software engineering with AI:
- AI coding agents are ubiquitous — across every development environment
- Tool usage requires constant evolution — applying six-month-old approaches is already counterproductive
- Specifications now rival code in importance — structured intent beats ad-hoc prompting
- Agents span multiple domains — from IDEs to cloud infrastructure
- Parallel execution enables parallel exploration — not just faster, but fundamentally different
- CI/CD processes are shifting left with AI integration
- Realistic expectations about AI delivery matter for planning
The quote that stuck
Matthew Skelton captured it best: “Prompting is sorta dead, in the next level you’ll be writing specifications.” Specifications persist while prompts are ephemeral. They function as structured human-machine communication. Tests make specifications executable and verifiable.
The shift from prompts to specs is the shift from conversation to contract.