Manuel S. Martone

Senior AI Engineer | Indiepreneur | Co-author of ShipWithAI | Obsessed with delivering value through AI

[Manuel S. Martone @codebrainr]

Context engineering is the new prompt engineering. Garbage in, garbage out, but now the garbage is 200k tokens of irrelevant noise.

Master your context window or your AI agent is just an expensive random number generator.

[Manuel S. Martone @codebrainr]

Engineers resisting AI coding tools in 2026 is giving "I refuse to use Google Maps, I have a perfectly good paper atlas."

The road hasn't changed. You're just slower.

[Manuel S. Martone @codebrainr]

Hot take: if you haven't talked to a real user before writing a single line of code, you're not building a product, you're writing fan fiction about a problem that may not exist.

Validate first. Always.

[Manuel S. Martone @codebrainr]

Weekly reminder:
Your MVP doesn't need a settings page, 10 OAuth providers, or push notifications. It needs ONE core feature that solves ONE real problem.

Ship that. Everything else is procrastination dressed up as product work.

[Manuel S. Martone @codebrainr]

Don't pitch your side project's features. Pitch the pain it kills. Nobody cares about your tech stack, they care about their problem.

Lead with the wound, not the bandage.

[Manuel S. Martone @codebrainr]

That side project you abandoned in 2019? Dust it off. The idea didn't fail, it was just early.

Add an AI layer and you might have a product. Dead projects are just premature ones.

[Manuel S. Martone @codebrainr]

Context engineering is the new prompt engineering. What you feed an AI agent matters more than how you talk to it.

Garbage in, garbage out, at agent speed.

[Manuel S. Martone @codebrainr]

The engineers resisting agentic coding today are the same ones who "didn't need" Git in 2008.

Spoiler: they eventually came around. Save yourself the detour.

[Manuel S. Martone @codebrainr]

Blaming AI for bad code is like blaming spell-check for a bad essay. The tool didn't write it, you did. Own your output.

AI amplifies your skills, not your excuses.

[Manuel S. Martone @codebrainr]

That side project you abandoned pre-AI? Dust it off. What took 6 months to build then takes 6 days now.

Old ideas + new tools = new products. Your backlog is a goldmine.

[Manuel S. Martone @codebrainr]

We're moving from "automate the task" to "delegate the workflow." Agentic engineering isn't a buzzword, it's a new discipline.

The engineers who get this early will define the next decade.

[Manuel S. Martone @codebrainr]

@fulhadev I know exactly what you mean because it happened to everyone out there (I even id they don’t admit that).
The problem is context engineering is underrated as software desigb was underrated for years being expensive

Now bad context can kill your pocket, that’s the point

[Manuel S. Martone @codebrainr]

A good CLAUDE.md file isn't optional, it's the difference between an AI that codes to your standards and one that confidently makes a mess.

Context engineering is the new senior dev skill.

[Manuel S. Martone @codebrainr]

@RaminNasibov StarCraft

[Manuel S. Martone @codebrainr]

Your side project is underrated career leverage. It shows range, initiative, and real-world execution.

A GitHub repo ships louder than any bullet point on your résumé. Don't sleep on it.

[Manuel S. Martone @codebrainr]

The simplest advice possible almost nevertheless heard?
Validate your idea with real people before writing a single line of code.

A 10-minute conversation beats 10 weeks of building something nobody asked for.

[Manuel S. Martone @codebrainr]

Hot take: engineers resisting AI coding tools aren't protecting quality, they're protecting comfort.

The ones quietly using AI are shipping 3x faster. Fear is not a strategy.

[Manuel S. Martone @codebrainr]

Promote your side project by leading with the problem, not the features. Nobody cares that you "used Next.js with edge functions."

They care that you saved them 3 hours a week. Lead with pain.

[Manuel S. Martone @codebrainr]

That side project you abandoned in 2019 because it was "too complex"? Revisit it with an AI-first lens.
The hard parts are now table stakes. Your old ideas deserve a second look

[Manuel S. Martone @codebrainr]

Your CLAUDE.md file is your team's constitution for AI coding. Skip it, and you're handing a junior dev zero context and hoping for the best.
Write it once. Save yourself hundreds of corrections.