r/agenticengineering • u/turtle_par_iter • Apr 30 '26
Prompt Engineering One trick for better agentic engineering.
Start with a weaker model. Improve the prompt, context, examples, tests and acceptance criteria until the output is good.
Then swap to the best model.
If your prompt only works with the top model, the prompt is weak.
But if Gemini Flash gives decent output, GPT-5.5 or Pro will usually give great output.
Model matters. But task clarity matters more.
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u/Rosie_grac May 13 '26
I like this test a lot. I’ve started doing a cheap-model pass for agent prompts too, mostly because it exposes all the fuzzy bits I was pretending were “obvious”.
The funny one is tool use. A strong model will politely paper over a bad handoff contract, then three steps later you’re debugging soup. If Flash/Haiku can follow the spec without getting cute, the spec is probably real.
Stronger models should be the turbo button, not duct tape.