Context & Evidence Vocabulary

designing what information, tools, instructions, and state a model receives at each step

“Context engineering gave the assistant the relevant account record without loading the entire database.”

the limited amount of model input available for instructions, conversation, evidence, and outputs

“We preserved context budget by retrieving only the policy sections relevant to the question.”

the designated authoritative record used when copies or claims disagree

“The signed contract, not the sales notes, was the source of truth for renewal dates.”

documents, data, or examples supplied as supporting information for a task

“I attached the style guide as reference material for the rewrite.”

the origin and history of information, including how it was collected or transformed

“The report recorded each statistic's provenance so reviewers could trace it to the dataset.”

the degree to which information is current enough for the task

“Price comparisons need daily freshness, while the historical overview does not.”

the point after which a model's training knowledge is not expected to include new events or facts

“Because the question concerned a recent law, I checked live sources rather than relying on the knowledge cutoff.”

connecting a model's response to supplied, retrieved, or observed evidence

“Grounding the summary in the meeting transcript reduced unsupported details.”

an attribution that points readers to the source supporting a claim

“Each market-size claim included a citation to the exact table it used.”

shortening accumulated context while preserving the facts, decisions, and state needed to continue

“Context compaction turned a long agent history into a concise project brief.”