Context Is Architecture

If you’re building agentic systems, you already understand context engineering. You know that what you put in the context window matters. You know that clarity, structure, and explicitness determine whether your agent does something useful or goes off the rails.

Here’s what I think is underappreciated: that’s architecture.

Context engineering is about being explicit about what needs to happen, when, and how. It’s about documenting intent, defining boundaries, structuring information so it can be consumed and acted on reliably. Swap “context window” for “system” and you’re describing enterprise architecture.

The builders who are managing prompt templates, defining tool schemas, structuring agent instructions, and thinking carefully about information flow — they’re doing architectural work. They just might not call it that yet.

I think that connection matters. Because once you see context management as architecture, you start reaching for architectural tools: modularity, documentation standards, component boundaries, lifecycle management. And those tools are exactly what agentic systems need to move from clever prototypes to reliable production systems.

Context is architecture. And architecture is what gets you to production.