The Joe Reis Show From Data Engineering to Context Engineering w/ Nick Schrock
Nov 20, 2025
In a fascinating discussion, Nick Schrock, founder and CTO of Dagster, shares his evolution from AI skeptic to advocate, predicting that most code will soon be AI-generated. He delves into Dagster's innovative tools like Compass, a Slack-based agent connecting data teams and stakeholders. Nick emphasizes the importance of engineered context pipelines over traditional data feeding. With insights on real-time analytics and the shift in roles for data engineers and business users, this chat illuminates the future of data management in an AI-driven world.
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AI Will Write Most Code
- Nick Schrock believes AI will revolutionize software and that 90% of code will be written by AI.
- He attributes rapid change to both model quality and application-layer innovations like Claude CLI.
Manage Context Like Code
- Treat context as a governed, versioned asset stored in Git so data teams can manage it like code.
- Let stakeholders and data teams collaborate on context to enable safe, reversible changes.
Context Pipelines Beat Real-Time Dumps
- Real-time MCP-style context fetching is often imprecise and costly.
- Offline, batched "context pipelines" that synthesize and version context will be more efficient and precise.
