context-engineering

1# Context Engineering
2 
3## Overview
4 
5Feed agents the right information at the right time. Context is the single biggest lever for agent output quality — too little and the agent hallucinates, too much and it loses focus. Context engineering is the practice of deliberately curating what the agent sees, when it sees it, and how it's structured.
6 
7## When to Use
8 
9- Starting a new coding session
10- Agent output quality is declining (wrong patterns, hallucinated APIs, ignoring conventions)
11- Switching between different parts of a codebase
12- Setting up a new project for AI-assisted development
13- The agent is not following project conventions
14 
15## The Context Hierarchy
16 
17Structure context from most persistent to most transient:
18 
19```
20┌─────────────────────────────────────┐
21│  1. Rules Files (CLAUDE.md, etc.)   │ ← Always loaded, project-wide
22├─────────────────────────────────────┤
23│  2. Spec / Architecture Docs        │ ← Loaded per feature/session
24├─────────────────────────────────────┤
25│  3. Relevant Source Files            │ ← Loaded per task
26├─────────────────────────────────────┤
27│  4. Error Output / Test Results      │ ← Loaded per iteration
28├─────────────────────────────────────┤
29│  5. Conversation History             │ ← Accumulates, compacts
30└─────────────────────────────────────┘
31```
32 
33### Level 1: Rules Files
34 
35Create a rules file that persists across sessions. This is the highest-leverage context you can provide.
36 
37**CLAUDE.md** (for Claude Code):
38```markdown
39# Project: [Name]
40…