A Common-Sense Guide to AI Engineering • Jay Wengrow & Kris Jenkins

This interview was recorded for the GOTO Book Club. Jay Wengrow - Author of “A Common-Sense Guide to AI Engineering” & CEO of Actualize Kris Jenkins - Lifelong Computer Geek and Podcast Host RESOURCES Jay Kris DESCRIPTION In this GOTO Book Club episode, host Kris Jenkins sits down with Jay Wengrow — founder of coding bootcamp Actualize and author of the bestselling Common-Sense Guide to Data Structures and Algorithms — to dig into his latest book, A Common-Sense Guide to AI Engineering. Jay demystifies how AI agents actually work: at heart, they're a clever hack where your code intercepts an LLM's text output, watches for special notation, and triggers real functions when it spots them. From there, the conversation expands into guardrails (regex, judge LLMs, and specialist ML models), multi-agent architectures for complex tasks, and a hands-on example of a 150-line podcast-generating app built entirely from scratch — no framework required. The real throughline is a pragmatic, sceptical take on the current AI tooling landscape. Jay argues that frameworks can lock you into patterns that haven't been proven yet, and that the field is too new to know which abstractions are genuinely worth having. His rule of thumb: reach for a framework only when it will do something meaningfully better than you can — not just faster. The book was deliberately written around fundamentals rather than specific tools, so it ages well even as the ecosystem moves at breakneck speed. The conclusion is refreshingly grounded: understand the LLM's inherent limitations, build the middle layer thoughtfully, and don't outsource your system prompts to anyone — or anything. RECOMMENDED BOOKS Jay Wengrow • A Common-Sense Guide to AI Engineering • Jay Wengrow • A Common-Sense Guide to Data Structures and Algorithms • Jay Wengrow • A Common-Sense Guide to Data Structures & Algorithms in Python • Jay Wengrow • A Common-Sense Guide to Data Structures and Algorithms in JavaScript • Bluesky Instagram LinkedIn Facebook CHANNEL MEMBERSHIP BONUS Join this channel to get early access to videos & other perks: Looking for a unique learning experience? Attend the next GOTO conference near you! Get your ticket: gotopia.tech

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A Common-Sense Guide to AI Engineering • Jay Wengrow & Kris Jenkins is an episode from GOTO - Today, Tomorrow and the Future by GOTO.

This episode is 26:44 long.

This episode was published on Apr 28, 2026.

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