What Dex Horthy thinks about design

9 dated positions, 2026, in their own words. Our reading of what Dex Horthy has said — not written or endorsed by them.

9 positions so far — this page is not yet offered to search engines.

1. 15 Jul 2026

   Our readingContext engineering has stayed relevant for a year because it is grounded in how transformer attention works, and it will matter to anyone building on AI until post-transformer models arrive.

   Their wordsI think context engineering has been so long lived because it's it's grounded in the fundamentals of how transformer attention works and until we have post transformer models or linear attention or whatever it is which who knows when that's going to happen context engineering will be interesting and important to anyone building on AI

   ↗Context engineering with Dex Horthyyoutube.com 3rd of 26 in this recording

   Interesting

3. 15 Jul 2026

   Our readingThe engineering intuition that matters cannot be taught from a textbook — you know bad patterns in software because you have debugged them at three in the morning.

   Their wordsthere's a different kind of intuition that you that you develop over years as a software engineer and uh there's many categories of it but the one I'll I'll call attention to that is like a thing that you cannot teach you cannot do you cannot learn in a textbook. The only way to learn it is like I know bad patterns in software because I have debugged them at three in the morning.

   ↗Context engineering with Dex Horthyyoutube.com 6th of 26 in this recording

   Interesting

5. 15 Jul 2026

   Our readingThe valuable form of loop engineering is a slow loop — a nightly cron job that fixes one thing and opens one pull request — not a redesign of your whole infrastructure around agents.

   Their wordsSo I think the the thing I'm most excited is actually like what we call like iterated loops or like slow loops where we basically have a cron job. We have the loop the the the structure of the loop is really easy. It's like run this llinter fix one thing commit and push and then we run that every night in our GitHub actions and we wake up every morning to one PR that makes the codebase a little bit better.

   ↗Context engineering with Dex Horthyyoutube.com 8th of 26 in this recording

   infrastructure

   Interesting

7. 15 Jul 2026

   Our readingShip for three to six months with nobody reading the code and the codebase gets so bad that starting over is easier than fixing it — we ran a lights-off software factory and shut it down.

   Their wordsWe tried this. We built a lights off software factory in July of 2025 and by November we had shut it down. I think it takes about three to six months of you shipping all the time with nobody reading the code before you realize like, wow, this is getting way worse and it's easier to start over than it is to fix it.

   ↗Context engineering with Dex Horthyyoutube.com 9th of 26 in this recording

   Interesting

9. 15 Jul 2026

   Our readingLoops belong on codebase quality, not on shipping the features users want; we read all of the code, because program design is what decides whether a codebase stays changeable.

   Their wordsYou'll notice what I said was not use loops to ship the features that users want. We use loops to actually improve the codebase quality and we read all the code because we care about how it's architected and we care not just about the system architecture but what I would call the program design

   ↗Context engineering with Dex Horthyyoutube.com 10th of 26 in this recording

   Interesting

11. 15 Jul 2026

    Our readingModels will not learn to write maintainable code from today’s benchmarks, because the cost of bad architecture cannot be measured by running the unit tests — it arrives three to six months later.

    Their wordsthe problem with training models on maintainability is like the cost function of bad architecture and bad program design can't be evaluated by running the unit test because it hits you 3 to 6 months later

    ↗Context engineering with Dex Horthyyoutube.com 11th of 26 in this recording

    benchmarkswritingsoftware quality

    Interesting

13. 15 Jul 2026

    Our readingIf you want loop engineering, build one loop at a time and keep them small: every part of the agentic-factory playbook is good advice except the part where you stop reading the code.

    Their wordsif you want to do loops engineering, you should build one loop at a time and you should keep them small and contained. Basically, I think everything except stop reading the code is really good advice.

    ↗Context engineering with Dex Horthyyoutube.com 15th of 26 in this recording

    Interesting

15. 15 Jul 2026

    Our readingWithout good intuition for models, treat 100k tokens on smaller models and 200k on the frontier ones as the line past which the quality of your results is probably already degrading.

    Their wordsBut if you don't have good LLM intuition, like 100K for smaller models, 200K for these like really beefy like Codeex and Opus 4.8 models is usually a good like training wheel guideline of like if you pass there, your quality of results may be degrading.

    ↗Context engineering with Dex Horthyyoutube.com 21st of 26 in this recording

    LLMs

    Interesting

17. 15 Jul 2026

    Our readingYou can teach somebody to be a really good AI developer in a few months, but you cannot teach them a computer science degree in three — so hire for the fundamentals.

    Their wordsWe can we can teach we can teach somebody, I think, to be a really good AI developer in a few months. You can build enough intuition where you are, you know, accelerated off the ground and you can go like keep growing there. It's really hard to teach someone a CS undergrad program in in 3 months.

    ↗Context engineering with Dex Horthyyoutube.com 26th of 26 in this recording

    Interesting