Glossary / Core concepts
Epistemic Engineering
Epistemic Engineering is the practice of engineering how AI systems handle evidence, uncertainty, sources, justification, and meaning across real workflows. For Hermes Labs, this work happens primarily at the language and runtime layer (prompts, retrieval, memory, policies, rubrics, traces, and tool schemas) rather than in model weights.
How it manifests · In practice
In practice this means auditing and hardening the language and runtime layer where production failures can emerge: the prompt, the retrieved context, the memory, the policies, the rubric, and the tool schemas, rather than retraining the model.
Evidence: Taxonomy paper
Related terminology
- epistemic integrity
- epistemic reliability
- context engineering
- AI reliability engineering
Not the same as
- model alignment
- model training
- epistemology