Context Pattern — Problem

Pattern: Context
Component: problem.md
Version: 1.1 | Updated: 2026-07-16

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Statement

Downstream agents (planner, coder, reviewer, debugger) fail when context is empty, stale, secret-laden, or a noisy whole-repo dump. They invent APIs, miss existing helpers, or leak sensitive material into prompts and logs.

Measurable symptoms

Symptom	How you detect it
Invented symbols	Agent references types/functions absent from package and repo
“Missing file” loops	Agent repeatedly asks for paths that should have been included
Token blowouts	Context package > budget; quality degrades mid-task
Secret hits	Hook or DLP flags keys, tokens, .env, prod dumps
Stale excerpts	Package cites deleted APIs or pre-refactor shapes

Root cause

Context is treated as incidental paste rather than an engineered artifact: no inclusion rationale, no exclusion rules, no size budget, no validation before consumption.

Non-goals of this pattern

• Not a vector database / RAG product architecture
• Not a substitute for CLAUDE.md / AGENTS.md standing instructions
• Not unbounded “index the company”
• Not planning or coding — only packaging evidence for those agents

Related failure modes

See failures.md.