Everything You Need to Know About Context Engineering in 40 Minutes | Ravi Mehta

Everything You Need to Know About Context Engineering in 40 Minutes | Ravi Mehta

From Behind the Craft by Peter Yang

May 3, 2026 · 39 min

About this episode

Ravi Mehta discusses context engineering and demonstrates a 3-layer system for building AI applications.

Ravi is a top AI instructor and former CPO of Tinder. In our episode, he did a live demo of using his 3-layer context engineering system (functional, visual, data) to build a beautiful music app instead of the usual AI slop. You’ll never build with AI the same way again after learning about Ravi’s approach. Ravi and I talked about: (00:00) Why most AI prototypes feel like slop (01:08) Context engineering, explained from first principles (05:12) Layer 1 demo: Functional context (09:38) Layer 2 demo: Visual context (13:31) Layer 3 demo: Data context (15:47) Building a custom MCP server in Claude Code (19:54) The full stack prompt: all 3 layers in one shot (24:21) Why separating the data layer is the real unlock (28:59) Should PMs prototype or just ship to production? (33:51) Where PRDs still fit in AI native product development Thanks to our sponsors: Wispr Flow: Don't type, just speak https://ref.wisprflow.ai/peteryang Linear: The AI agent platform for modern teams https://linear.app/behind-the-craft Granola: The AI meeting notes app that saves you hours. https://granola.ai/peter 📌 Get the takeaways…

People in this episode

Host: Peter Yang

Guest: Ravi Mehta

Topics covered

  • context engineering
  • AI development
  • music app design
  • prototyping
  • product management

Keywords

  • context engineering
  • AI prototypes
  • music app
  • functional context
  • visual context
  • data context
  • MCP server
  • product development

Sponsors

Wispr Flow, Linear, Granola

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Tinder

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