The real value in Opus 4.5 isn't a single headline feature more it's the cumulative effect. Edge cases that previously required creative workarounds and careful engineering now resolve cleanly out of the box.

There's an emerging divide among experienced devs. Engineers who derived satisfaction from the outcome, product, solution, the user impact are integrating AI seamlessly. Those whose identity was rooted in the act of writing code, crafting syntax are facing close to an existential crisis.

MCP has been a game changer for agentic development but a redundant MCP anti-pattern is emerging: simple CLIs replaced by MCP adding latency and context waste. Using mature CLIs as intended and MCPs for stateful or complex APIs preserves context efficiency and reliability.

Vibe coding democratises development and has its place in the engineering process but true agentic engineering demands an understanding of multi-agent systems driven by rigorous context engineering and an understanding of the foundational principles of the engineering process.