Prompt engineering used to get treated like copywriting on caffeine. In practice it is closer to policy design. Define the task, the boundaries, the pattern. Check the result against reality. The magic phrase never showed up.
The prompt is not the product
In a modern system the prompt sits among several layers. System instruction, user task framing, retrieved context, examples, tool configuration, output schema, evals and downstream checks.
That is why prompt work feels less like wordsmithing now. It is closer to operating a multi-layer interface contract.
Prompt as phrasing