Right: for me that's when "prompt engineering"/"context engineering" start to earn the "engineering" suffix: when people start being methodical and applying techniques like evals.

You've heard of science versus pseudo-science? Well..

Engineering: "Will the bridge hold? Yes, here's the analysis, backed by solid science."

Pseudo-engineering: "Will the bridge hold? Probably. I'm not really sure; although I have validated the output of my Rube Goldberg machine, which is supposedly an expert in bridges, and it indicates the bridge will be fine. So we'll go with that."

"prompt engineer" or "context engineer" to me sounds a lot closer to "paranormal investigator" than anything else. Even "software engineer" seems like proper engineering in comparison.

It’s validated and filtered but isn’t it still guessing at the core? Should we call it validated guessing?