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Context Engineering

A playbook for curating what your coding agent sees, when it sees it, and how it's structured — to keep output quality high.

Dev & CodingIntermediate★ 423⑂ 45AI score 8/10Last updated: Sep 13, 2026

What it does

  • Defines a context hierarchy: rules files (CLAUDE.md) → spec/architecture docs → relevant source files → error output → conversation history, with guidance on when each should be loaded.
  • Ships a rules-file template: a CLAUDE.md skeleton covering tech stack, commands, code conventions, hard boundaries, and a style example — plus equivalents for .cursorrules, .windsurfrules, .github/copilot-instructions.md, and AGENTS.md.
  • Context budget management: start trimming at 75% capacity, with tables for what to cut first (failed attempts, verbose tool output) versus what to protect until the end (task definition, live error, active file); compress instead of deleting.
  • Restartable session contract: persist scope, task status, changed files, verification commands, and open questions before ending a session; re-check real git status in the fresh one.
  • Confusion management: when spec and code conflict or a requirement is missing, surface options and ask rather than silently guessing.
  • Anti-pattern and rationalization tables: diagnoses context starvation, context flooding, stale context, missing examples, and the "context cliff".

Who it's for

  • Developers using Claude Code, Cursor, or similar agents who keep seeing project conventions ignored.
  • Tech leads standardizing a shared rules file across a team repo.
  • Anyone whose agent quality degrades halfway through long sessions.

Example uses

  1. New repo setup: "Create a CLAUDE.md for this project" → the agent fills in stack, commands, conventions, and boundaries using the template.
  2. Quality recovery: the agent starts inventing nonexistent APIs → apply the context-starvation fix: load the rules file plus one existing example of the pattern before editing.
  3. Task switching: moving from auth to billing, record progress and verification results, then open a fresh session and selectively load only billing-related files.

· · · Install guide · · ·

Try it now, no install

Paste this into Claude to use the skill without installing anything.

Read the instructions in this file and follow them to help me:
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/aiskillstore/marketplace/HEAD/pending/addyosmani/context-engineering/SKILL.md

What I want: (describe your task here)

If Claude can't open the link, open it yourself and paste the contents instead.

↓ If it works for you, download the ZIP below and install it. Then it runs on its own — no pasting each time.

Install in the Claude app (no terminal)
  1. Download the ZIP with the button below.
  2. In Claude, open Settings → Capabilities and turn on 'Code execution and file creation'. (one time)
  3. Go to Customize → Skills → + → 'Upload a skill' and upload the ZIP.
↓ Download ZIP
Install in Claude Code

Let Claude do it — paste this into Claude Code

Install the skill I found on Claude Skill Mart.
Copy the pending/addyosmani/context-engineering folder from the GitHub repo aiskillstore/marketplace into my ~/.claude/skills/context-engineering/.
When it's done, tell me in one line what this skill can do.

Install with a command instead

git clone https://github.com/aiskillstore/marketplace.git /tmp/marketplace && mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills/context-engineering && cp -r /tmp/marketplace/pending/addyosmani/context-engineering/* ~/.claude/skills/context-engineering/

⚠ This is a third-party skill. Check the source repository before installing.

  1. Open a terminal.
  2. Clone the repo into a temp directory: git clone https://github.com/aiskillstore/marketplace.git /tmp/marketplace
  3. Create the skill directory: mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills/context-engineering
  4. Copy the files: cp -r /tmp/marketplace/pending/addyosmani/context-engineering/* ~/.claude/skills/context-engineering/
  5. Verify that ~/.claude/skills/context-engineering/SKILL.md exists.
  6. Restart Claude Code, then try a prompt like "Review the context setup for this project" to trigger the skill.
  7. (Optional) For project-scoped use, copy into .claude/skills/ at your repo root instead of ~/.claude/skills.
View source on GitHub ↗