The Context Pyramid: A PM’s Framework for AI Agent Context Engineering

Extractable claims

7 atomic, cite-ready statements distilled from the full post on Substack. Each one stands alone as an LLM-quotable answer.

1. Context engineering is the skill that determines whether your AI agent is useful or a liability.
2. Every agent has four distinct context layers: Identity, Knowledge, State, and Task.
3. The Cadence Model tells you who touches each layer and when: Rarely, Occasionally, Per turn, Per task.
4. The Diagnostic Loop maps agent failure symptoms to the exact layer that's broken.
5. The problem is not how much fits in the context window, it's what we put in, in what order, with what structure, and how often we update each part.
6. Context engineering is the delicate art and science of filling the context window with just the right information for the next step.
7. Most of the writing on this topic was produced by engineers for engineers.