Runic Artifice

The discovery of the runic formulae to enable devices to draw power from mana-infused materials sparked off a revolution in device-craft, eventually called artifice. The ability to power devices and the ability to machine the parts to tight enough tolerances grew up hand in hand, so devices from even 20 years ago do not use techniques that are commonplace today.
A trained artificer is required to draw the runes, position the materiel, and otherwise magically align a device, or to repair it if it becomes damaged. It helps the artificer immensely if they have enough innate magical talent to sense the energy flows of the device under construction, but it is not strictly required. Sufficiently trained artificer can direct the energy flows they know exist, without being able to sense them, but it is much more difficult.

Utility

Artifice generally transforms energy into another kind of energy, or into work. It can be used for heating and cooling, self-motive clockwork, and cold light generation.

Manufacturing

There exist "artifice factories" which produce nothing but known, standard parts for artifice devices. Despite the name "factories" these are relatively rare and small in number, but these parts can be combined in clever ways to make some truly remarkable devices.
Generally, a bespoke design will still be smaller, more elegant, and use fewer parts and less energy than one created from standard parts to do the same job.

Complexity

Artifice can be seen as a combination of runecraft and alchemy, and a working or theoretical knowledge of either or both can help the artificer learn the skills. In all three fields of study, it helps to have enough magical talent to sense the energy flows being manipulated.

Discovery

Very early experimentation with black powder led runecrafters to suspect that there might be a way to harness the energy stored in materiel in a less-explosive way, and to transform it at need into something to do useful work. The first formulae transformed the explosive energy of black powder into a slower motive energy that was used to run clockwork devices.