Claude Code Context Exercises — AI skill for Claude Code

Context Engineering Exercises — Chapter 4

The Context Lab

These exercises accompany **Chapter 4: Context Engineering** of the Agent Factory textbook. Unlike standalone exercises, this is a **single evolving project**: you start with a broken "Contract Review Agent" and progressively engineer its context to production quality.

Each module applies one technique from the chapter and **measures the improvement** — so you can see exactly how context engineering affects agent behavior.

Prerequisites

• Claude Code installed and working (claude --version)
• Completed Chapter 4 reading (or working through it alongside these exercises)
• A text editor for reviewing and editing files
• Basic familiarity with CLAUDE.md, skills, and hooks concepts

Quick Start

1. Clone or download this repository
2. Open the starter-agent/ folder — this is your broken Contract Review Agent
3. Read starter-agent/review-tasks.md to understand the three standardized tasks
4. Read starter-agent/scoring-rubric.md to understand how you will measure quality
5. Open EXERCISE-GUIDE.md for the full walkthrough
6. Begin with Module 1: Context Rot

Module Overview

Module	Topic	Key Technique	Time
1	Context Rot	Identifying 4 rot types	30 min
2	Signal vs Noise	4-Question Audit Framework	45 min
3	Architecture	Tool selection mapping	45 min
4	Persistence	Tasks, knowledge, /clear survival	45 min
5	Lifecycle	Zone monitoring, compaction	60 min
6	Memory	Corpus design, drift measurement	45 min
7	Isolation	Multi-agent pipelines	60 min
A	Capstone: Your Domain	Full production agent	90 min