---
id: "anthropic-effective-context-engineering"
title: "Effective context engineering for AI agents"
creator: "Anthropic"
url: "https://www.anthropic.com/engineering/effective-context-engineering-for-ai-agents"
level: "intermediate"
category: "agents"
models: ["any"]
source_date: "2025-09-29"
date_added: "2026-10-18"
---

[Agents and harnesses](/agents/index.md)

# Effective context engineering for AI agents

by Anthropic

[Read the original →](https://www.anthropic.com/engineering/effective-context-engineering-for-ai-agents)

Treats context as a finite budget: compaction, notes, sub-agents.

Anthropic discusses choosing and maintaining the information available to an agent. The article is useful when longer-running work begins to lose important details or accumulate irrelevant context.

Level: [Intermediate](/levels/index.md#intermediate)
Models: any
Category: [Agents and harnesses](/agents/index.md)
Tags: [context-engineering](/tags/context-engineering/index.md)
Source date: 2025-09-29
Added: 2026-10-18
Last verified: 2026-10-18
Status: ok

Summary in our own words. All rights with the original creator. Correction or removal: DM on X.