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Ethan Mollick (@emollick.bsky.social): The sudden collapse of the value of Chain-of-Thought (even summarized CoT) in the agentic era changes working with AI. Effectively steering AIs and getting any sort of observability now requires you

L3 · BuilderOpinion & Analysis@emollick.bsky.social· 10/15/2026

Critical insight for builders using AI agents about evolving prompt engineering strategies and debugging techniques.

AI Summary

Ethan Mollick argues that Chain-of-Thought prompting has lost effectiveness in the agentic AI era, requiring new approaches like requesting interim outputs and AI-assisted troubleshooting.

Excerpt

The sudden collapse of the value of Chain-of-Thought (even summarized CoT) in the agentic era changes working with AI. Effectively steering AIs and getting any sort of observability now requires you to ask for interim outputs & tests, and to use AI help to troubleshoot problems you find.

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