Context Passing & Management

Context is the information an agent needs to do its job well. Too little context and the agent guesses. Too much context and the agent drowns in irrelevant information that dilutes the signal. Context management is the discipline of passing exactly the right information to each agent — not everything the coordinator knows, but the specific subset that the receiving agent needs for its specific task.

I use three levels of context. Task context — the immediate assignment: what to do, what format to return, what constraints to follow. This is unique per dispatch. Domain context — the background knowledge the agent needs: the client's industry, the engagement scope, the competitive landscape. This is shared across agents working the same engagement but different from engagement to engagement. System context — the agent's standing instructions: its role definition, communication protocols, output standards. This is constant and rarely changes.

When dispatching, the coordinator assembles context from all three levels. System context is baked into the agent's prompt template. Domain context is injected from the engagement record. Task context is written fresh for each dispatch. The result is a prompt that gives the agent everything it needs and nothing it does not.

1. 1. Define System Context The agent's role, communication standards, and output format requirements. This lives in the agent's prompt template and rarely changes. Update it when the agent's scope or standards evolve.
2. 2. Load Domain Context The engagement-specific information: client name, industry, stakeholders, scope, timeline. Pull this from the engagement record. Include only what is relevant to the agent's specialty — the research agent needs industry context, the legal agent needs compliance context.
3. 3. Write Task Context The specific assignment for this dispatch: what to produce, what format, what constraints, what is the deadline. This is unique per task and should be concise — if the task context exceeds a paragraph, the task may need to be decomposed into subtasks.
4. 4. Verify Context Completeness Before dispatching, check: does the agent have everything it needs to complete this task without asking follow-up questions? If not, add the missing context. If the agent has to ask the coordinator for clarification, the dispatch was incomplete.