Term

Context

Info

Originally written in French. Translated by AI — the meaning has been preserved, not the prose.

Short definition

A durable workspace gathering, around a goal, the sources, notes, drafts, decisions and earlier texts on a single subject — and in which an AI reads and writes.

Full definition

The word has two general senses you have to set aside. In ordinary usage, context is the situation surrounding a statement. In the technical sense used for language models, it is the window of text supplied to a model for a request.

In the articles on this blog, the term designates something else: an organized, persistent set of files, attached to a goal, in which work accumulates. It lasts beyond one exchange, it keeps what was decided, and it can be picked up again after an interruption.

It is that persistence which separates it from a model's window: the window is filled then emptied, the context remains.

Layer added by "The Deliverable Is No Longer the Capital" (2026-09-04). The context is also defined by what it stands against inside itself: it keeps the material, where the Build produces the outputs. What it capitalizes is therefore not a past form — what was sent — but a future capacity: what was understood, decided, verified, ruled out, and what can still be produced from there.

Layer added by "AI Doesn't Replace Judgment" (2026-09-02). A context holds five things together, and it is their conjunction that defines it more surely than a list of folders: an intention (the goal), a material (the sources), a memory (the decisions and what was ruled out), rules (the working method) and a real state of the work (where things stand). The last two are often missing from note systems, and they are what allow you to resume after an interruption.

Layer added by "Information systems aren't going away. Their shape is changing." (2026-07-08). The word is also used at the scale of a company, where it designates a unit of information organization: a product context, a support context, a customer context, a source-code context, a standards context. The goal that defines it there is a business goal, and its scope coincides with no application — it draws on several without replacing any.

Layer added by "In software, the edge will no longer be technology" (2026-03-23). A third scale is added, between the workstation and the company: the context of a product opportunity. It designates everything that frames that opportunity and decides what should be built — the customer's business, its real users, its technical constraints, the standards that apply, the culture on the ground, the competition and the alternatives in place. It is not to be conflated with its rendering: the Context document is the dated written account of it, the context is the material.

Layer added by "Session source: what your documents don't capture" (2026-07-20). A context isn't defined only by the documents it receives. It is also judged on what it has no way of receiving: three families of material feed it — documentary curation, industrialized user research, unwritten knowledge — and only the last requires a deposit channel, since no tool emits it. It is this declared goal that separates a context from mere storage: it allows an accumulation of fragments to be reread, connected, compared and stabilized, where a warehouse keeps them exact and mute.

Usage in the field

Used to designate where a capture lands, and to explain why critical feedback can be situated — it compares against what the context already holds.

Synonyms and variants

"workspace" when the emphasis falls on the place; "the right context" when it falls on choosing the set a piece of material belongs to.

Not to be confused with

context window — the amount of text a model can process at once. It is ephemeral and bounded; the context is durable and is loaded selectively.
prompt — an instruction addressed to a model at a given moment. A context can supply what is needed to write a prompt; it doesn't reduce to one.
folder — a grouping of files by subject, with no declared goal and no memory of decisions. A context has a goal, and it is that goal which makes a piece of material relevant or off topic.
Information system — the set of applications and databases through which a company records what it does. It is divided by tool; the context is divided by goal.
Active memory — organizational memory that keeps, alongside the facts, what they taught. The context is its unit; active memory is its sum at company scale.

Examples

Speech dictated into a phone that is added "to the right context": the choice bears on the working set the idea belongs to, not on a filing folder.

Ambiguities / debates

The term is used in three incompatible senses by audiences that talk to each other — situation, model window, workspace. That is the reason this entry exists.

AI & context Knowledge & notesHow I Write My Articles by Talking to My Phone
2026-09-07 · 9 min read
AI & context Knowledge & notesThe Deliverable Is No Longer the Capital
2026-09-04 · 9 min read
AI & contextAI Doesn't Replace Judgment, It Speeds Up Maturation
2026-09-02 · 8 min read
AI & context Business & managementInformation systems aren't going away. Their shape is changing.
2026-07-08 · 10 min read
AI & context Product managementIn software, the edge will no longer be technology. It will be understanding the context.
2026-03-23 · 8 min read
AI & context Knowledge & notesSession source: what your documents don't capture
2026-07-20 · 6 min read

Related ideas

Session source
designates one of the objects a context holds, and the closest to raw material.
World of ideas
the floor of a context that keeps what has been understood.
Build
the floor of a context that produces the outputs, as opposed to those that keep.
MCP
defined against this entry: MCP is a means of feeding a context, it is not that context.
A capture that lands in a workspace is already a positioning
uses this term to name the space where the capture lands.
Critical feedback is only worth something if it compares the material with what already exists
uses this term to name the set the material is compared with.
Capitalizing on a past form is not capitalizing on a future capability
uses this term to name what carries future capacity.
Partitioning memory by project is what makes it reloadable
uses this term to set the scope to partition: a goal, not a folder.
A business context runs through the applications instead of replacing them
uses this term to set its relation to existing applications.
Working with an AI consists in tending the context around it rather than writing good prompts
uses this term to name what daily gestures maintain.
Session memory
defined against this entry: it designates one of a context's contents, the one recording the unfolding rather than the material.
Context document
defined against this entry: the document is a dated written account rendering the state of a context for an opportunity, the context is the workspace itself.
When producing becomes abundant, the advantage moves from the capacity to produce toward understanding the context
uses this term at the scale of a product opportunity, to name what the edge shifts towards.
An understanding of the context becomes a company advantage only once it is written down
uses this term to name what writing turns into a company asset.
Sliding window
defined against this entry: it bounds a period for counting consumption, where the context window recalled here bounds the amount of text processed in one request.
Bounded context
defined against this entry: the bounded context bounds a model and its vocabulary, where a context bounds a working goal.
A perfectly documented context stays incomplete by everything the product manager never wrote down
uses this term to designate what documentary completeness says nothing about.
A micro-signal is only worth something through its buildup in a context that knows why it keeps it
uses this term to name the condition of accumulation: a space that has a goal, as opposed to storage.
What a context lacks is not one more source but a channel for the material no process produces
an angle that redefines this object's completeness by what it cannot receive.
Directive
defined against this entry: the directive says how to handle what enters a context, it is not material of that context.
Customer knowledge
defined against this entry: the context is the container and the method, customer knowledge one of the materials it holds.
A context system moves up one step each time the previous one stops being enough
uses this term to name the object whose construction path it describes, step by step.
In AI-assisted work, the disk carries the memory and the conversation is only a channel
uses this term to name the file space that stands in for main memory.
A working context must be able to receive a message when no session is open
uses this term to name what a mailbox gives an address to outside a session.
Mission
defined against this entry: the mission is the declared goal, the context is the set of files held around that goal.
Focus
defined against this entry: focus is one of the most volatile files in a context.
Excellence in a field comes from the depth of the context you have internalised, not from mastery of technique
situates the value of what the term designates before it is even written down: what makes excellence is the depth of the internalized situation, not technique.
Context window
distinguished from this entry: the window is ephemeral and bounded, the context persists and is loaded into it selectively.
Checkpoint
distinguished from this entry: the checkpoint is a dated image of the context, not a living part of it.
Specific knowledge
distinguished from this entry: the context is what can be written about a situation, specific knowledge what remains once everything has been written.