Stop Prompting. Start Orchestrating. Java + Agents: Context, Tokens, Workflows

Why we picked it

Most of us are already using agentic coding in some form: Claude, Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, or whatever new thing shipped this week. This talk is about the next layer: where the industry is heading as agents take on larger chunks of software work, and what Java developers need to learn to stay ahead. We’ll focus on context management, token strategy, orchestration, Codex-style workflows, cost optimization, and the practical judgment required to use these systems without losing the plot. The goal is to move beyond intro demos and into the real skill stack: knowing what to delegate, how to frame goals, how to keep agents grounded in larger codebases, how to get more value from fewer tokens, how to catch drift before it becomes damage, and how to verify output in a way that actually protects quality. This is also a career talk, because the tools are improving too quickly for casual awareness to be enough. The developers who stay valuable will not just be the ones who “use AI”; they’l