Even if LLMs continue to get exponentially more powerful, there will be core engineering techniques that make LLM-powered software more reliable, more scalable, and easier to maintain.
• How We Got Here: A Brief History of Software • Factor 1: Natural Language to Tool Calls • Factor 2: Own your prompts • Factor 3: Own your context window • Factor 4: Tools are just structured outputs • Factor 5: Unify execution state and business state • Factor 6: Launch/Pause/Resume with simple APIs • Factor 7: Contact humans with tool calls • Factor 8: Own your control flow • Factor 9: Compact Errors into Context Window • Factor 10: Small, Focused Agents • Factor 11: Trigger from anywhere, meet users where they are • Factor 12: Make your agent a stateless reducer
