What is amazonq-context-architecture?

A guide to how Amazon Q Developer chooses which project files and rules to read as context. It covers rule files, context profiles, token limits, and the difference between its IDE and command-line use.

Use it to audit loaded context, fix glob-based rule matching, diagnose oversized files, and choose between IDE context and command-line profiles.

It helps explain why Q may miss project conventions, load too much information, or reject files that exceed its context limit.

amazonq-context-architecture — Skill by navendubrajesh

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.

Any agent

npx skills add navendubrajesh/context-management-for-agents --skill amazonq-context-architecture

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/navendubrajesh/context-management-for-agents

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

README.md

[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/navendubrajesh/context-management-for-agents/amazonq-context-architecture/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/navendubrajesh/context-management-for-agents/amazonq-context-architecture)

Your own site

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/navendubrajesh/context-management-for-agents/amazonq-context-architecture"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/navendubrajesh/context-management-for-agents/amazonq-context-architecture/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

Your own site · 80×15

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/navendubrajesh/context-management-for-agents/amazonq-context-architecture"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/navendubrajesh/context-management-for-agents/amazonq-context-architecture.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>

Per session 89 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.

When invoked 935 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.

Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.

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.

Model	Per session	Once invoked
Fable 5.1	$0.00089	$0.00935
Opus 5.5	$0.00036	$0.00374
Sonnet 5.5	$0.00018	$0.00187
Haiku 4.5	$0.00009	$0.00093

Measured 2mo ago against content hash 77c9283faeff, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

amazonq-context-architecture 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 2mo 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/amazonq-context-architecture/SKILL.md · 77 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 77 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Amazon Q Developer Context Architecture

Amazon Q Developer loads project rules from .amazonq/rules/ (markdown files, optionally nested), plus default globs for README.md and AmazonQ.md. The Q CLI adds context profiles, explicit /context add, and hard token limits on matched files. Chat uses the open file plus explicitly added context; rules apply automatically when matched.

When to Activate

Activate this skill when:

Diagnosing why Q ignores project conventions or loads too many rule tokens
Using /context show to audit what Q CLI includes
Understanding glob-based rule matching and subdirectories
Hitting ValidationException errors from oversized context files in CLI
Choosing between IDE chat context and CLI global context profiles

Do not activate this skill for adjacent work owned by other skills:

Do not activate for platform-agnostic attention theory: context-fundamentals.
Do not activate for writing .amazonq/rules/ content: amazonq-customization.
Do not activate for chat compaction and /compact: amazonq-session-management.
Do not activate for custom external RAG: memory-systems.

Core Concepts

Project rules loading

On first interaction, Q scans .amazonq/rules/ and loads applicable markdown rules into context. Rules can live in subdirectories (e.g., .amazonq/rules/frontend/react.rule.md). Filename is organizational — Q reads all .md files in the tree.

Rules apply automatically in IDE chat; developers can toggle individual rules on/off per session via the Rules button.

Default context globs (CLI)

Q CLI typically matches:

.amazonq/rules/**/*.md
README.md
AmazonQ.md

Use /context show to see matched files and approximate token counts per file.

Context profiles (CLI)

Profiles organize which context files apply to a session. Global vs profile-scoped files appear in /context show breakdown. Enterprise Q Developer profiles (IAM Identity Center) are subscription/settings collections — distinct from CLI context profiles but affect which features and settings apply.

Read the full file on GitHub · 77 lines

Files

What ships with it

1 file beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

references/amazonq-context-internals.md 1.2 KB

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.

2mo ago First seen · 77 lines · 89 tokens per session scan A 77c9283faeff

Subscribe to this mod's changes

amazonq-context-architecture is a skill published in the GitHub repository navendubrajesh/context-management-for-agents (2 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 89 tokens to every session and 935 once invoked, about $0.0004 per session on Opus 5.5. 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 2026-08-31.

Building agents Memory and context

amazonq-context-architecture next to 6 skills from other repositories
Mod	Type	Stars	Last push	Licence	Scan	Tokens	Works with
amazonq-context-architecturenavendubrajesh/context-management-for-agents	Skill	2	1mo ago	MIT	A	89	Claude Code, Codex
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mem0-oss-to-platformmem0ai/mem0	Skill	68k	2d ago	Apache-2.0	A	217	Claude Code, Codex
forgetasgeirtj/system_prompts_leaks	Skill	71k	2d ago	CC0-1.0	A	74	Claude Code, Codex
Cortexdanielmiessler/LifeOS	Skill	20k	yesterday	MIT	A	184	Claude Code
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