The Complete Guide · 7 chapters

Context Engineering: The Complete Guide

A prompt is one message; context is everything the model can see when it reads that message. Context engineering is how you control that environment so an agent behaves reliably across hundreds of runs — not just once. This guide starts with what context engineering is, then works through the practice one chapter at a time: how it differs from prompting, what to put in an agent's context window, the practices that hold up in production, the tooling, and the wider system an agent runs inside. Read it start to finish, or jump to the part you need.