context-engineering

context-engineering is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from nexus-substrate/nexus-agents. It costs 70 tokens per session (2,116 once invoked), scanned C, original, MIT.

A method for deciding what information a coding agent should receive, when it should receive it, and how it should be organised.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when starting sessions, configuring rules files, managing agent context and budgets, or dividing work among subagents.
Why use it?
It helps prevent incorrect patterns, ignored project conventions, and poor results caused by too much or poorly chosen context.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Part of the nexus-agents plugin — 33 skills, 16 agents, 1 hook shipped together

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/nexus-substrate/nexus-agents/context-engineering
Any agent
npx skills add nexus-substrate/nexus-agents --skill context-engineering
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/nexus-substrate/nexus-agents

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Or install nexus-agents, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 33 skills, 16 agents, 1 hook.

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.

agentmods badge for context-engineering

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/nexus-substrate/nexus-agents/context-engineering.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/nexus-substrate/nexus-agents/context-engineering)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/nexus-substrate/nexus-agents/context-engineering"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/nexus-substrate/nexus-agents/context-engineering.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 70 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 2,116 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan C 1 finding. 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 $0.00070 $0.02116
Opus 5 $0.00035 $0.01058
Sonnet 5 $0.00014 $0.00423
Haiku 4.5 $0.00007 $0.00212

Measured 3d ago against content hash 5570391f0b5e, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade C, and why

context-engineering scanned grade C with 1 finding 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 3d 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.

Hidden instructionshighPrompt injection

Directives inside HTML comments, invisible characters or bidirectional overrides are read by the model and not by the person reviewing the file.

<!-- CANONICAL SOURCES: - CLAUDE.md "Context Budget" + "Subagent Context Management" - CLAUDE.md "auto memory" + the persistent memory system at ~/.claude/projects/.../memory/ - .rules/subagent-coordination.md (auto-load
skills/context-engineering/SKILL.md · 168 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 168 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Context Engineering Skill

When to apply

  • Starting a new session — load the right rules + memory + recent state
  • Output quality is drifting (wrong patterns, hallucinated APIs, ignoring conventions)
  • Fanning out work to subagents — every prompt has a context budget
  • Setting up a new project for AI-assisted development
  • Switching between unrelated parts of the codebase (start fresh, don't drag old context)

The context hierarchy (most → least persistent)

1. Rules files            CLAUDE.md, AGENTS.md, .rules/*.md
2. Memory                 ~/.claude/projects/.../memory/MEMORY.md + topic files
3. Spec / architecture    docs/architecture/*.md, ADRs (loaded per feature)
4. Relevant source        source files for the task (loaded per task)
5. Live state             error output, test results (loaded per iteration)
6. Conversation           accumulates, compacts automatically

Higher levels persist across sessions; lower levels are transient. Engineer the higher levels well — they pay for themselves on every future session.

Level 1 — rules files

Project-wide, always loaded. nexus-agents canonical:

  • CLAUDE.md — prime directive, type-safety policy, anti-sprawl, autonomous-loop rules, tooling commands
  • AGENTS.md — per-skill routing keywords for non-Claude tools
  • .rules/*.md — auto-loaded per-topic rules (typescript.md, git.md, subagent-coordination.md, untrusted-input.md, etc.)

Edits here have repo-wide leverage. Treat with care: these are the single biggest input to every future session.

Level 2 — memory

Per-user, cross-session. ~/.claude/projects/-home-william-git-nexus-agents/memory/:

  • MEMORY.md — index, always loaded. Keep entries to one line < 200 chars.
  • <topic>.md — detail loaded on relevance.
  • See CLAUDE.md "auto memory" for what to save (user/feedback/project/reference) and what NOT to save (anything derivable from git log or current files).

Read the full file on GitHub · 168 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. 3d ago First seen · 168 lines · 70 tokens per session scan C 5570391f0b5e

Subscribe to this mod's changes

context-engineering is a skill published in the GitHub repository nexus-substrate/nexus-agents (18 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed MIT. It adds 70 tokens to every session and 2,116 once invoked, about $0.0003 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it C with 1 finding (hidden instructions). No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

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