AI Glossary
What is Context Engineering?
Overview
Context engineering is the practice of designing what information, tools, instructions, memory, and retrieved evidence an AI system receives before it acts. It matters because stronger models still fail when the surrounding context is stale, noisy, incomplete, or poorly structured.
Why it matters
Good context engineering turns model capability into dependable product behavior.
Where it appears in AI research
- Agent architecture design
- RAG and memory systems
- Prompt and tool orchestration
- Enterprise AI deployments