context-engineering

A method for giving an AI coding agent information in stages: rules first, then architecture, relevant source files, errors, and conversation context.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it before planning, designing, building, reviewing, checking, or fixing unfamiliar code, and when resuming work from saved state.
Why use it?
It avoids filling the agent's limited working memory with irrelevant material while reducing missed dependencies and invented details.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/galando/temper/context-engineering
Any agent
npx skills add galando/temper --skill context-engineering
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/galando/temper

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 18 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,301 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00018 $0.01301
Opus 5 $0.00009 $0.00651
Sonnet 5 $0.00004 $0.00260
Haiku 4.5 $0.00002 $0.00130

Measured 2d ago against content hash 8a3a2de5c808, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

context-engineering scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 2d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

skills/context-engineering/SKILL.md · 126 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 126 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Context Engineering

Version: 1.0.0 Last Updated: 2026-05-12

Overview

Context engineering is the discipline of loading the right information, in the right order, at the right time. AI coding agents have finite context windows. Loading too much wastes tokens and dilutes attention. Loading too little causes hallucinations and missed dependencies.

This skill provides a hierarchical loading strategy that maximizes signal per token:

Priority 1: rules      → pack rules, stack conventions, guardrails
Priority 2: arch       → module boundaries, dependency graph, entry points
Priority 3: source     → specific files relevant to the current task
Priority 4: errors     → recent failures, test output, runtime errors
Priority 5: conversation → prior decisions, user intent, stakeholder context

When to Use

  • Start of every /temper stage (plan, design, build, review, check, fix)
  • Before making changes to unfamiliar code
  • When resuming a session from saved state
  • When context feels stale (agent is repeating itself or missing obvious facts)

Process

Step 1: Determine Task Scope

Before loading anything, answer:

  1. What am I doing? (fixing a bug, adding a feature, reviewing code)
  2. What files am I likely to touch? (from tasks.md or plan.md)
  3. What do I already know? (from current context or build-state.json)

This takes 10 seconds and prevents loading 80% of files you won't use.

Step 2: Load Rules (always first)

Load in this order:

  1. .claude/temper.config — enabled packs, stack, review settings
  2. .claude/packs/{enabled-pack}/rules.md — only enabled packs
  3. .claude/packs/stacks/{detected-stack}.md — stack-specific patterns (if exists)
  4. .claude/CLAUDE.md — project conventions

Budget: ~200 lines total. If packs exceed this, load only the packs scoped to the current phase.

Step 3: Load Architecture (if touching unfamiliar code)

  1. Start with the file you need to change
  2. Trace dependencies: what does it import? What imports it?
  3. Stop at 2 hops — do not traverse the entire dependency graph
  4. If plan.md exists: read the file list section only (not the full plan)

Read the full file on GitHub · 126 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 2d ago First seen · 126 lines · 18 tokens per session scan A 8a3a2de5c808

Subscribe to this mod's changes

context-engineering is a skill published in the GitHub repository galando/temper (15 stars, last pushed 3d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 18 tokens to every session and 1,301 once invoked, about $0.0001 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

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