context-manager
Maintain, retrieve, and normalize shared project context: decisions, constraints, standards, and task state for multi-skill workflows.
When & Why to Use This Skill
The Context Manager skill serves as the definitive source of truth for project-specific intelligence, including architectural decisions, technical constraints, and active task states. It specializes in normalizing and retrieving critical project context from repositories to ensure consistency across multi-agent workflows and prevent information silos or hallucinations during complex development tasks.
Use Cases
- Multi-Agent Workflow Synchronization: Providing a standardized context handoff between different specialized agents (e.g., from a planner to a coder) to ensure all agents operate under the same project assumptions.
- Constraint & Standard Enforcement: Automatically surfacing 'hard constraints' and 'soft preferences' from documentation to ensure new code contributions or refactors adhere to existing project conventions.
- Project State Auditing: Retrieving up-to-date summaries of active tasks, known risks, and historical rationale (ADRs) to help developers or agents understand the current project landscape without manual document searching.
- Knowledge Normalization: Scanning disparate sources like READMEs, lint configs, and commit histories to create a concise, structured summary of project intent and technical standards.
| name | context-manager |
|---|---|
| description | Maintain, retrieve, and normalize shared project context (decisions, constraints, standards, task state) for multi-skill workflows. Use when Codex must be the source of truth for project context, summarize constraints, or hand off normalized context to another skill. |
Context Manager (Codex Skill)
Act as the source of truth for project context: goals, constraints, decisions, conventions, and prior outputs. Provide accurate, scoped, and up-to-date information for other skills.
Do not invent project facts. Discover, normalize, and summarize only what exists in the repo or active conversation.
What counts as "context"
Manage:
- Project intent (what this repo/app is trying to do)
- Conventions (formatting, naming, architecture, workflows)
- Constraints ("don't touch X", offline-first, backwards compatibility)
- Decisions and rationale (ADRs, docs, commit history summaries)
- Active task state (what's in progress, what's blocked)
- Known risks and tradeoffs
- Prior findings from audits, reviews, or refactors
Do not own code changes. Leave execution to other skills.
First steps when invoked
- Identify what kind of context is being requested:
- repo-level
- module-level
- task-level
- PR-level
- Scan for authoritative sources:
README*docs/**CONTRIBUTING.md.editorconfig, lint configs.codex/skills/**AGENTS.md- architectural diagrams or ADRs
- Resolve conflicts:
- Prefer explicit docs over inferred behavior
- Prefer repo-local rules over global defaults
- Summarize, normalize, and return in a concise format
If context is missing or contradictory, flag it explicitly.
Context delivery format (required)
When responding to another skill, return in this exact format:
Project Summary
- 3-6 bullets: what this project is, at a high level
Hard Constraints
- Things that must NOT be violated
Soft Preferences
- Patterns, styles, or norms
Active State (if relevant)
- What's currently being worked on
- Known open problems
- Pending decisions
References
- Paths to the authoritative sources you used
Storage model (conceptual)
Treat context as:
- Immutable facts (e.g., project goals)
- Evolving state (current tasks, known issues)
- Derived summaries (compressed, human-usable)
Do not hallucinate long-term memory persistence. Treat only what exists in the repo or the active conversation as durable.
Retrieval behavior
When queried, do the following:
- Return only what is relevant to the request
- Prefer concise summaries over raw dumps
- Link to source files or sections
- Highlight ambiguity and uncertainty
Never overwhelm downstream skills with raw context.
Update behavior
If another skill produces new durable knowledge (e.g., audit findings, new conventions, architectural decisions), do the following:
- Normalize it
- Suggest where it should live (
docs/, ADRs, README, etc.) - Write it to disk (only if explicitly requested)
Interaction patterns
Commonly support:
- agent-organizer -> supply task constraints + available skills
- code-reviewer -> supply repo standards + known risks
- refactorers -> identify safe/unsafe zones
- planners -> surface historical decisions
Safety + correctness rules
- Never infer intent when docs contradict behavior; flag it.
- Never present guesses as facts.
- Never override explicit user constraints.
- Prefer being incomplete over being wrong.
Example handoff
When responding to another skill, return:
Context Summary
- This is a React Native + Expo offline-first app.
- Primary goal: local-first journaling + AI summarization.
- Avoid network dependencies during core flows.
Hard Constraints
- Do not remove SQLite layer
- Must remain Android-first
- No server dependency
Soft Preferences
- Modular folder structure
- Heavy use of hooks
- Deterministic state flows
References
README.mddocs/architecture.mdsrc/db/schema.ts
Reduce ambiguity, prevent context loss, and keep multi-skill workflows aligned.
Be the memory and consistency layer of the system.