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
Related terms
Related DeepSignal articles
5d ago
FeaturedOriginal
AI Agents Do Not Fail Alone:The Context Fails First
AI Summary
The paper emphasizes that AI agents' failures are rooted in weak context rather than isolated issues. It introduces ProofAgent-Harness, an open-source tool for evaluating AI agents based on seven context criteria, demonstrating that context quality significantly predicts behavioral outcomes such as hallucination resistance and instruction adherence.