cortex-context

name	cortex-context
description	Refresh the system-prompt context bundle for the current task. Pulls active laws, recent decisions, similar past turns, and relevant snippets via the Cortex pre-thinking pipeline. Use this when the user asks to "load context", "remind me what we know about X", "before I change Y", or whenever the conversation needs grounding against Cortex's institutional memory.

cortex-context

Use this skill when the user is about to make a change to code or docs and you want focused context — laws that apply, decisions that were made, similar turns from past sessions — without spamming the prompt.

When to use

• The user asks to refactor, modify, rewrite, or change something.
• The user asks "why did we pick X?" or "what laws apply here?".
• The user is starting a new task and you have low confidence about the scope.
• The user says "before you do that, remind yourself what we know".

Do NOT use this skill for:

• General free-text search — use /cortex-query or the cortex_query tool with intent=free_search instead.
• Auditing a past turn — use the cortex-audit skill.

How to invoke

Call the cortex_pre_thinking MCP tool with:

{
  "user_prompt": "<the user's most recent prompt verbatim>",
  "cwd": "<absolute path to the user's current working directory>",
  "session_id": "<the active Claude Code session id>",
  "turn_id": "<the active turn id>",
  "budget_bytes": 32768,
  "budget_ms": 600
}

Always pass cwd — the pipeline derives the repo from the nearest .git/ ancestor + a per-repo cortex.toml override. Without cwd you get repo-less results that are markedly worse.

How to use the response

The tool returns a Markdown bundle with a fixed section order:

1. Active laws in this scope — load-bearing; mention every one the model is about to violate.
2. Recent decisions you should know about — cite the DEC-XXXX ids verbatim when summarising.
3. Similar past turns — paraphrase, do not re-quote at length.
4. Relevant snippets — only mention if the user is touching the same file.

The leading comment carries query_id=<ULID>; surface it when the user asks "where did this context come from?" so they can audit the retrieval against cortex.events.query_audit.

Empty bundle

If the bundle is empty (no laws, decisions, turns, or snippets matched), the tool returns the empty string. Do not invent context. Tell the user "Cortex returned no relevant context for this scope" and proceed with whatever the user asked.

Failure modes

• Tool returns isError: true with reason: api_unreachable → cortex-api is down. Note it once and continue without the bundle; the session is not blocked.
• Tool returns reason: rate_limited → wait the suggested retry_after_ms before retrying.