context-engineering

Use when writing, editing, or optimizing commands, skills, or sub-agent prompts. Provides deep understanding of context mechanics in agent systems.

The Anatomy of Context:

Component	Role	Key Insight
System Prompts	Core identity and constraints	Balance specificity vs flexibility ("right altitude")
Tool Definitions	Available actions	Poor descriptions force guessing; optimize with examples
Retrieved Documents	Domain knowledge	Use just-in-time loading, not pre-loading
Message History	Conversation state	Can dominate context in long tasks
Tool Outputs	Action results	Up to 83.9% of total context usage

Key Principles:

• Attention Budget - Context is finite; every token depletes the budget

• Progressive Disclosure - Load information only when needed

• Quality over Quantity - Smallest high-signal token set wins

• Lost-in-Middle Effect - Critical info at start/end, not middle

Practical Patterns:

• File-system based access for progressive disclosure

• Hybrid strategies (pre-load some, load rest on-demand)

• Explicit context budgeting with compaction triggers