--- name: smithersai-context-engineer description: "The concierge proxy — turn a vague user script (\"I need the agent to help me do X\") into a context contract, route it to the right skills/workflows, add backpressure (tests/evals/reviews/approvals), execute, and report. Use when a request is multi-step, durable, or human-in-the-loop and you'd otherwise hand-roll the orchestration; skip it for a single prompt → single answer." license: "MIT" metadata: decimalai-skill-id: "264e5ccb-c669-4a7c-a4a8-f837b7ec9381" decimalai-version-id: "ae081c68-3889-46ef-8372-4ececa7fb247" decimalai-version: "1" decimalai-body-sha256: "18911e35ad1c9ab98c53e5c3a9018cee77c7de32ea05065e56742ebea5fb6e80" decimalai-name: "smithersai/context-engineer" decimalai-format: "1" decimalai-invocation: "model" decimalai-category: "agent-tooling" decimalai-source: "https://app.decimal.ai/s/smithersai-context-engineer@1/SKILL.md" --- # Context Engineer `context-engineer` is an archived Smithers **concierge** example: a proxy agent turning a half-formed request into an executable, durable, observable run. Not installed by `init`: copy `examples/init-pack/context-engineer.tsx` and its dependency closure into a project, or ask the seeded `create-workflow` to build an equivalent. ## The job The user says *"I need the agent to help me do X."* They needn't know what "context engineering" is. Convert that script into five things: 1. **a context contract**: goal, non-goals, assumptions, inputs (+ sources), constraints, risks, desired artifacts, success criteria; 2. **a route**: the smallest sufficient path (one task, a set of skills, or a durable sub-workflow); 3. **a backpressure plan**: every success criterion mapped to a verification gate (schema / test / eval / review / approval / trace); 4. **executed artifacts**: work done (or dispatched), looped until gates pass; 5. **a report**: a self-contained HTML slideshow of what happened. ## The layered model Model an agent as a control system: **prompt** (instructions, examples, output format) → **context** (info/tools/memory/schema entering each step) → **harness** (runtime, tools, permissions, retries, fresh-context loops) → **workflow** (graph, parallelism, review loops, approvals, resumability) → **backpressure** (every desired behavior gets a gate). The proxy layer is the differentiator: the user owns only the prompt's intent (business/domain questions); **Smithers owns the outer four layers** (all agent-engineering ones): context in the workflow graph + memory, harness in `agents.ts`/sandboxes/`repoCommands`, workflow in the runtime, backpressure in the gate matrix, all filled by `context-engineer`. ## The operating loop This mirrors the workflow's ``: classify → inventory → grill → route → backpressure → approve → execute → report. - **Intake & classify** (`classify-script`): read the script, name the modes touched (research / planning / implementation / debug / report), and decide `durable`: real workflow, or one task? - **Build a context inventory** (`inventory-context`): scan the repo, available tools/commands, `.smithers/skills`, and memory to draft the contract, filling gaps with explicit `assumptions` and listing what's `missingInputs`. - **Grill, only to reduce risk** (`context-engineer:grill`, the `` component): ask **one question at a time** with a **recommended answer + reason**, stopping once ambiguity no longer changes the plan. **Never ask what's discoverable** from repo/docs/tools/memory: auto-answer yourself. Every ambiguity resolves to *assumption | question | deferred decision*. - **Maintain a visible contract**: the shared artifact, kept current so the human can read goal/non-goals/criteria anytime. - **Backpressure** (`build-backpressure`): turn each success criterion into ≥1 gate with a `verificationMethod` (`schema` | `unit_test` | `integration_test` | `eval` | `review` | `approval` | `trace` | `manual_check`) and a `gateType` (`blocking` | `warning` | `informational`). The contract isn't "ready" until every blocking criterion names a verification method. - **Approve** (`approve-contract`): a durable `` gate so a human signs off on contract, route, and gates before side effects. - **Execute** (`execute:loop`, a ``): run or dispatch the routed work, looping until the gates pass; on repeated failure, revise context or harness, not just the prompt. - **Report** (`report`): emit the HTML slideshow from run state. ## How to run it ```bash # Launch the concierge on a vague script. --review true (default) inserts the # approval gate; --review false runs straight through. bunx smthrs workflow run context-engineer \ --prompt "I need the agent to help me harden our rate limiting and prove it works" # Watch it bunx smthrs ps # active / paused / recent runs bunx smthrs logs -f # follow the event stream bunx smthrs inspect # full run state (contract, route, gates) bunx smthrs why # why is it paused? # Clear the design-approval gate once you've read the contract bunx smthrs approve --node approve-contract --by bunx smthrs deny --node approve-contract # send it back # Bail out bunx smthrs cancel ``` The run **pauses durably** at `approve-contract` (a suspended run is a row, not a process, so it costs nothing while waiting), then proceeds to execute and report. **Cheaper / adjacent paths:** - **`route-task`**: the degenerate concierge for "just run one task": it classifies a script, then runs it as a single task or recommends the right durable workflow, for work that's clearly one-shot (a single task is a first-class outcome, not a routing failure). - **`create-workflow`** / **`create-skill`**: authoring, not execution. Dispatch these when the route is "we need a new durable workflow / a new reusable skill" to build it (clarify → provision → design → approve → scaffold → verify → document), then run the result. ## When to use vs. skip - **Single prompt → single answer, or a one-off edit:** skip the concierge and answer directly: the overhead buys nothing. - **Clearly one task:** use **`route-task`** (above). - **Multi-step, needs ordering / crash-recovery / a human gate / loop-until-true, or the user wants work to keep going while away:** use **`context-engineer`**, where a contract + route + backpressure + durable execution + report pays off. ## Reference `context-engineer` composes `GrillMe`, prompts at `.smithers/prompts/context-engineer-*.mdx`, an `` gate, and a `` loop (above). See `skills/smithers/SKILL.md` for the runtime mental model and full CLI catalog, and `docs/llms-core.txt` for the exact component/CLI surface.