Context Engineering and Brand Compliance with Claude Code 2.0 Sub-Agents
Jason and Ryan explore the evolution from prompt engineering to context engineering, discussing how sub-agents help manage context windows and divide labor efficiently. Jason provides a hands-on demonstration of Claude Code 2.0's new features, including the output style command (offering default, explanatory, and educational modes), the security review command for vulnerability scanning, and the agents wizard for creating custom sub-agents. The highlight is a practical demo of a brand compliance checker agent that analyzes a Core Web Vitals demo app and automatically updates it to match Datadog's official color palette and brand guidelines. They discuss performance trade-offs with Sonnet 4.5, the token-saving benefits of @ mentioning agents, and interesting behaviors like Sonnet 4.5's use of git worktrees for better branch management. The episode emphasizes how specialized agents can handle not just code but also design compliance, accessibility, and security concerns.
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Key Takeaways
- Context engineering is emerging as the new discipline beyond prompt engineering, focusing on managing what goes into the context window across agents
- Custom sub-agents can enforce brand compliance by checking color palettes, fonts, and messaging guidelines automatically during development
- Claude Code 2.0's output style feature allows three modes: default (just do the task), explanatory (explain implementation choices), and educational (pause and ask you to write code)
- The new security review command automatically scans for vulnerabilities, API key leaks in PRs, accessibility issues, and security best practices
- Using @ mentions for agents is more token-efficient than spelling out 'use your MCP server tool and then the name'
- Sonnet 4.5 intelligently uses git worktrees instead of branches, naming them by issue number and date, then cleaning up directories automatically
- Performance remains slower than previous models, likely due to high utilization and everyone defaulting to the same model without access to 3.5 or 3.7