Teams often talk about model context as if the only question is whether enough tokens fit. That framing misses the design problem. A context window is a capacity constraint; a context system is an editorial strategy.

Great context systems do three things well:

1. They select the right information instead of everything available.
2. They preserve provenance so the model can distinguish source material from instructions.
3. They adapt granularity to the user's intent and the current execution step.

Once you adopt this lens, the real work becomes curation. You start shaping bundles, retrieval hints, summaries, schemas, and checkpoints that help the model stay oriented without flooding it.