context-engineering

Trigger: /context-engineering

Designs the experiential container around a practice: physical setting, body priming, temporal framing, social setting, intention, and re-entry. Based on Carl Hayden Smith's Contextology. Usable on its own to prepare any space for practice, or as a preparation step ahead of any other healing-swarm skill.

Agents

• Context Engineer - Container design across all six Contextology dimensions
• Accessibility Auditor - Sensory, mobility, and cognitive access review
• Ethics Guardian - Consent, invitation-not-demand framing, and re-entry safety review

Inputs

Input	Required	Description
focus	Yes	The practice and setting to prepare for (e.g., "20-minute breath practice at home, alone")
social	No	alone (default), dyad, group
duration	No	brief (20 min total), standard (35 min total), deep (55 min total)

Outputs

• context-design.md - Complete container design across all six dimensions, with accessibility adaptations and a re-entry plan folded in

Examples

Solo home practice container:

/context-engineering "20-minute breath practice at home, alone"

Dyad session container:

/context-engineering "prepare a paired session" --social dyad

Deep integration container:

/context-engineering "closing container after a difficult session" --duration deep

The Six Contextology Dimensions

Dimension	Design question
Physical setting	What should the person see, hear, and feel in the space?
Body priming	What posture and breath state should the practice begin from?
Temporal framing	When is this best done, and what buffers surround it?
Social setting	Alone, dyad, or group, and what facilitation stance fits?
Intention	Why this practice, why now, held as an invitation?
Re-entry	What does the person return to, and how do we soften the landing?

Container Durations

Duration	Total	Arrival Buffer	Practice	Re-entry Buffer
Brief	20 min	2 min	13 min	5 min
Standard	35 min	3 min	25 min	7 min
Deep	55 min	5 min	40 min	10 min

Research Basis

Evidence level: Theoretical (framework)

Contextology is Carl Hayden Smith's framework for treating context as a deliberate design surface. His estimate that surrounding conditions shape roughly 80% of an experience's outcome is his own working figure, not a measured research finding, and every context-design.md attributes it that way. The broader claim that "set and setting" shape subjective experience does have research heritage of its own, most visibly in the psychedelic-assisted therapy literature (Leary & Metzner's original framing, later synthesized by Hartogsohn) and in placebo/expectancy research. This skill borrows the concept, never the substance: pharmaco-technologies are hard excluded from every container it designs.

Safety

• shared/crisis-response.md is loaded for this skill. The Context Engineer owns re-entry, and re-entry is exactly where adverse reactions surface — a destabilized return needs a crisis path, not only a "stop early" option.
• shared/contraindications.md screens whatever practice the container wraps.
• Pharmaco-technologies are a hard, non-negotiable exclusion. No context is ever designed around a substance-based experience.
• A stopping option is required in every container: permission to end early and re-enter gently at any point.
• Intention is held as an invitation, never a demand. Ethics Guardian escalates if framing drifts toward pressure or deficiency language.

Quality Gates

Before output is finalized:

• All six Contextology dimensions addressed
• Arrival buffer and re-entry buffer both present
• Context estimate attributed to Smith ("~80%"), never stated as fact
• Sensory, mobility, and cognitive accessibility adaptations included
• Pharmaco-exclusion enforced
• Re-entry never drops a person into a demanding task
• A stopping option offered

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The room shapes the practice as much as the practice shapes the room.