CES 2026 is showing us physical robots, but the real revolution is happening in our terminals. Here’s why your "Prompt Engineering" certificate is already gathering dust.
The "Chatbot" is so 2024
Remember when we were all impressed that an LLM could write a Python script? We’d copy the prompt, paste the code, fix the bug, and repeat.
Fast forward to this week at CES 2026. We’re seeing robots like LG’s CLOiD folding laundry and navigating homes autonomously. They aren’t waiting for a "prompt" for every finger movement; they are orchestrating a goal.
As developers, we are hitting the same wall. Typing into a chat box is a bottleneck. In 2026, if you’re still just "chatting" with AI, you’re manually doing the work an agent should be doing for you.
From Prompts to "Agentic Workflows"
The shift we’re seeing right now is from stateless prompts to stateful orchestration. * Old Way: "Hey AI, write a test for this function." (One-shot, manual intervention).
- 2026 Way: An agentic loop using LangGraph or CrewAI that detects a new commit, identifies missing tests, writes them, runs the suite, fixes its own hallucinations, and only pings you on Slack when the PR is ready.
We aren't "prompt engineers" anymore. We are Agent Architects.
The 3 Pillars of the 2026 Stack
If you want to stay relevant this year, stop obsessing over which model is better (Gemini vs. GPT-x is a commodity now). Start obsessing over these three things:
- Orchestration (The Brain): Moving beyond simple chains. We’re talking about "Manager Agents" that delegate to "Specialist Agents."
- Tool-Use (The Hands): Teaching your AI to actually use your internal APIs, navigate your Jira, or even check your AWS billing.
- Memory (The History): Giving agents a persistent state so they don’t "forget" what they did in the last deployment.
"Secure by Default" is the new vibe
With Microsoft flipping the switch on "Secure by Default" for Teams this week, the same applies to our agents. We can’t have "double agents" with unchecked access. 2026 is the year of Identity-based Agent Security. Every agent you build needs a scope, a permission set, and an audit log.
My Prediction: The "Agent OS"
By the end of this year, we won't be talking about "AI features." We’ll be talking about the Agent OS—a layer in our stack where autonomous workers live.
The question isn't whether AI will replace devs. The question is: Are you the dev who writes the code, or the dev who manages the 10 agents writing the code?
💬 Let’s Discuss
Are you moving your projects to a multi-agent setup yet? Or are you still team "Single Prompt"?
I'm curious—what’s the first task you’re handing off to a permanent agent this year?
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