---
description: Context quality checklist for system prompts and agent instructions
globs:
  - "**/tools/**/*.ts"
  - "**/prompts/**/*.ts"
  - "**/*.prompt.ts"
  - "AGENTS.md"
  - ".cursor/rules/**"
  - ".cursor/skills/**"
  - ".agents/skills/**"
alwaysApply: false
---

### Context Engineering Checklist

When writing or reviewing agent instructions, tool descriptions, or prompts:

- Is this explained elsewhere? → Consolidate to one location
- Would a senior dev infer this? → Remove if obvious
- Can this be an example instead? → One example beats three paragraphs of rules
- Is this defensive repetition ("MUST", "NEVER", "CRITICAL")? → State once, remove emphasis
- Does this duplicate a tool's own description? → Keep in tool description only
- Are there prescriptive step lists? → Compress to a sentence
- Is the altitude right? → Specific heuristics, not hardcoded logic or vague guidance
- Is this stable across requests? → Move to cached/static portion