Context Engineering

by addyosmani

Context Engineering is an AI Engineering skill for Claude Code, published by addyosmani in agent-skills.

86.7K stars9.3K forkson addyosmani/agent-skillsAdded 2026/08/13Repository updated 2026/08/11

View source on GitHub Download repo ZIP

agent-skillsantigravityclaude-codecodexcursorskills

Install in seconds

Install Context Engineering

Copy Context Engineering into your Claude Code skills folder. Run the command in your terminal, or review the source on GitHub before installing.

terminal

npx degit https://github.com/addyosmani/agent-skills/tree/main/skills/context-engineering ~/.claude/skills/context-engineering

Requires Node.js. Downloads this skill only — not the rest of the repository — into your Claude Code skills folder.

Without Node.js

git clone https://github.com/addyosmani/agent-skills.git

Clones the whole repository, then copy the skill’s own directory into your skills folder yourself.

In this catalog

Source file: skills/context-engineering/SKILL.md in addyosmani/agent-skills
Installs to: ~/.claude/skills/context-engineering
Collection: One of 24 skills cataloged from this repository
Category: AI Engineering — 2451 skills

What Context Engineering does

Context Engineering optimizes the information an AI agent sees by structuring rules files, specs, source files, error output, and conversation history. Use when starting a session, when agent output degrades, or when setting up project context.

Context Engineering is cataloged under AI Engineering on DirSkills. Context Engineering comes from a repository tagged agent-skills, antigravity, claude-code, codex and cursor.

Documentation

README

Excerpt

Context Engineering

Overview

Feed agents the right information at the right time. Context is the single biggest lever for agent output quality — too little and the agent hallucinates, too much and it loses focus. Context engineering is the practice of deliberately curating what the agent sees, when it sees it, and how it's structured.

When to Use

Starting a new coding session
Agent output quality is declining (wrong patterns, hallucinated APIs, ignoring conventions)
Switching between different parts of a codebase
Setting up a new project for AI-assisted development
The agent is not following project conventions

The Context Hierarchy

Structure context from most persistent to most transient:

This is the opening of the README. Read the full README on GitHub.

Frequently asked about Context Engineering

What else does addyosmani publish alongside Context Engineering?
Context Engineering is one of 24 skills that DirSkills catalogs from addyosmani/agent-skills, the repository it ships in. Its siblings there include API and Interface Design, Agent Skill Discovery and Browser Testing. Each one is a separate skill with its own page in this directory, installs the same way Context Engineering does, and is maintained by addyosmani in that same repository. The rest of the collection is listed on the addyosmani/agent-skills page.
How does Context Engineering compare to other AI Engineering skills?
Context Engineering ranks #56 by stars among the 2451 AI Engineering skills in this catalog. The most-starred ones next to it are Architecture Decision Records, AI-First Engineering and Agentic OS. DirSkills ranks by the star count of the repository each skill ships in, so that order reflects how popular those repositories are rather than any review of Context Engineering against them. Open each page to compare what they document and how they install.