#69 Brian Houck - Treat context like code
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#69 Brian Houck - Treat context like code
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Narrated by:
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Most teams spend their AI budget on models and harnesses. Brian Houck thinks the weak link is
the context we hand the agent.
Brian is a Distinguished Scientist at DX and spent 20 years researching developer productivity at
Microsoft. With Margaret-Anne Storey, Max Kanat-Alexander, Eirini Kalliamvakou and Nicole
Forsgren he wrote CAFE(S), a framework for what makes context good enough for an agent to use.
What you'll hear:
- The five CAFE(S) properties: clarity, actionability, fidelity, efficiency, and security
- Why "order me food" fails as a prompt, and what a 25-year-old ramen post has to do with it
- Why 88% of engineers in Brian's research regularly lose time to out-of-date documentation, and
how AI makes that worse
- The productivity-experience paradox: developers ship more and feel worse about it
- The easiest productivity win for an engineering manager. It involves the calendar.
Links:
CAFE(S) paper (ACM Queue): https://queue.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3847288
Brian Houck on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianhouck/
DX: https://getdx.com
More episodes & all platforms: https://stellarwork.start.page
Newsletter: https://substack.com/@stellarwork
Host: Ben, founder of Stellar Work