Every directory of the layer carries its contract, and a worker reads what applies

Context is a tree, not one file: the documents that apply to a path are resolved from the root down, the nearest one adds and never silently replaces, and a worker loads what its task needs and nothing more.

status

stable

exposed through

• ✓cli
• ✓api
• ✓mcp
• ✓cockpit
• ✓docs

area

context

What it does

majordomus context resolve <path> prints the documents that apply to a path, least specific first; context explain says why each is in or out; context validate refuses a tree with a missing contract, a duplicate identity, a broken or cyclic override, or an override of a document marked final; context affected names the documents a change set touches. The repository scope is declared once, out over in, and the executable discovers, indexes and serves nothing outside it.

What it does not do

A provider's own nested-file loading is an optimisation the tool does not replace; the resolution is what applies. The checkout-local half of the layer is never context and never published.

The capabilities behind it

The capability modules of the executable this feature names, each with the capabilities it composes. The command line, the HTTP route, the MCP tool and the reference beside every row are projections of one declaration, not four registrations.

The commands that run it

• majordomus context work · read-only

  What the next worker needs to know now, in authority order and within a budget.

The objects it is made of

Kinds of the layer. Each is a schema, a source class and a file on disk; the number beside it is what this repository holds today, counted at build time.

• context27
• scope1

What it answers

Operational moments from the Why catalogue that name one of this feature's mechanisms. Nothing here was assigned: a moment appears because it names a rule, a command, a capability or a claim this feature also names.

• →re-explained the same context to a brand-new session
• →found two agents fixing the same bug in two branches
• →watched the strongest model, at maximum effort, rename a variable
• →opened CLAUDE.md and AGENTS.md and found two different rulebooks for one repository
• →watched a session undo last week's decision, for the reason it was made
• →found a task "in progress" that nobody had touched for three weeks
• →found the rule for that directory in a README no session ever loaded
• →spent an hour discovering something the repository already knew, twice
• →watched the always-loaded instruction file grow past a thousand lines
• →watched one worker revert another worker's change, on purpose
• →found five worktrees and could not say which of them still mattered
• →had two sessions writing into one checkout without either knowing
• →changed a policy in one place and found the old one still in force in three others
• →found code that contradicted a decision the repository had written down
• →found a substantial change that no issue, ticket or plan ever asked for
• →had a green pipeline over generated files that no longer matched their sources
• →could not say why one provider was used for that work and another for this
• →found the same thing explained three times, slightly differently
• →spent the first hour in an unfamiliar repository working out what was normal here
• →reviewed a well-written contribution that broke a convention it had no way to discover

The rules that hold it

• blockingContext integritymajordomus.context-integrity
• advisoryLoad minimum sufficient contextmajordomus.minimum-sufficient-context
• blockingContext localityproject.context-locality
• blockingWhat a worker reads is declared once, and nothing outside it is read or servedproject.scope-is-declared
• advisoryLayout integritymajordomus.layout-integrity
• blockingAI layer integritymajordomus.ai-layout-integrity

What is guaranteed

• guaranteed The context that applies to a path is composed from the layer's scoped documents, root to target, in one deterministic order with provenance, and a tree that does not validate resolves nothing
• guaranteed Every directory of the layer carries a context document, the exemption is declared by the contract that governs the subtree, and a descendant may narrow that requirement but never weaken it
• guaranteed The impact of a change set on the scoped context is reported from git — the documents, the scopes below them, moves with their ancestry, tracked sources to review, and stale projections — and an unrelated change reports nothing
• guaranteed The assembled context obeys a line budget, and every section it drops is named with its reason
• advisory A profile declares which context a worker should load and no more
• guaranteed What a worker reads of the repository is declared once in .ai/repo/scope.yaml, out wins over in, and the Rust executable discovers, indexes and serves nothing outside it
• guaranteed The repository's AI layer is one directory whose manifest names every section, readable without the tool
• guaranteed Checkout-local state lives under .ai/local/, is ignored by git, and is absent on a fresh clone or worktree
• guaranteed A hardcoded count in the always-loaded file is a failure

Executable use cases

• continuityRead only the context that fits the budget, and know what was dropped
• knowledgeRefuse a directory of the layer that documents nothing
• knowledgeTrace a change to the context documents it affects
• knowledgeDecide what belongs in the AI context, as data