The 2026 Blueprint
The model behind Groundwork. Two source documents, distilled into one page. Follow the links for depth.
The premise
Model capability is no longer the bottleneck. Context is. Agents are strong when they can see clean, scoped, current information about the code; they fail when they cannot. Treat context as code: structured, versioned, reviewed, verified.
Five context layers
Every piece of information an agent reads belongs in exactly one of five layers. Mixing them is the most common cause of "did the right thing locally, broke conventions globally."
→ Deep dive on the five-layer stack
Context rot
Even with good files in place, long agent sessions degrade. History accumulates, the runtime compacts it, the original rules turn into vague generalisations. Four distinct rot patterns, four mitigations.
| Rot | What it looks like | Mitigation |
|---|---|---|
| Poisoning | The agent uses deprecated APIs or stale syntax. | Stale-context checks. Explicit "use X, not Y" rules. |
| Distraction | Irrelevant rules fire in an unrelated area. | Scoped rules. Token budgets. Split-file architecture. |
| Confusion | Similar objects get conflated (User vs UserAccount). | Namespace mapping. Before/after examples. ADRs. |
| Clash | Two rules contradict; the last one seen wins, silently. | One canonical source. Cross-file consistency checks. |
→ Deep dive on cognitive debt and rot
The operational moves
The Playbook organises the practice as five lifecycle stages and a handful of architectural patterns. Each one has a command that operationalises it.
- Build the context on day one.
init. - Distribute it across harnesses with thin pointer files. Handled by
init. - Maintain it with verification baked into every harness file.
verify. - Update it as deltas, never rewrites.
document. - Measure it quarterly.
audit.
Three architectural patterns hold it together: a lean canonical file with split overflow, three-tier boundaries (Always / Ask first / Never), and an MCP policy with least-privilege gates.
→ The lifecycle · good practices · MCP principles · harness reference
Where to go next
If you maintain a repo: install Groundwork, then run init.
If you maintain a team: read cognitive debt first, then anti-patterns.
If you build the tooling: the CLI is what enforces it in CI.