context-fundamentals

1# Context Engineering Fundamentals
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3Context is the complete state available to a language model at inference time. It includes everything the model can attend to when generating responses: system instructions, tool definitions, retrieved documents, message history, and tool outputs. Understanding context fundamentals is prerequisite to effective context engineering.
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5## When to Activate
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7Activate this skill when:
8- Designing new agent systems or modifying existing architectures
9- Debugging unexpected agent behavior that may relate to context
10- Optimizing context usage to reduce token costs or improve performance
11- Onboarding new team members to context engineering concepts
12- Reviewing context-related design decisions
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14## Core Concepts
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16Context comprises several distinct components, each with different characteristics and constraints. The attention mechanism creates a finite budget that constrains effective context usage. Progressive disclosure manages this constraint by loading information only as needed. The engineering discipline is curating the smallest high-signal token set that achieves desired outcomes.
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18## Detailed Topics
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20### The Anatomy of Context
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22**System Prompts**
23System prompts establish the agent's core identity, constraints, and behavioral guidelines. They are loaded once at session start and typically persist throughout the conversation. System prompts should be extremely clear and use simple, direct language at the right altitude for the agent.
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