Retrieval finds candidates. Context Assembly determines what may shape the decision.
Combine eligible documents, operational data, calculated facts, features, memory, policy, user intent, and tool observations into one versioned Context Package.
Assemble the decision boundary, not just a search result
Instructions and intent
Trusted guidance, user intent, schemas, and decision requirements define what the boundary is for.
Facts and evidence
Retrieved documents, structured query results, feature values, operational state, and derived facts enter with roles.
Policy and observations
Policy facts, tool observations, memory, and prior context can participate without being flattened into prompt text.
Know when context is not ready for judgment
A completed retrieval is not necessarily a complete decision boundary. Missing, stale, denied, conflicted, incomplete, and out-of-budget context stay distinct.
Keep instructions, evidence, and untrusted content in distinct roles
Apply eligibility before information can influence the decision
A document can be highly relevant and still be ineligible for this user, workload, tenant, resource, purpose, data classification, region, or moment in time.
Carry authority into Context Assembly
Eligibility can change after permission revision, resource change, reclassification, expiry, policy change, or purpose change.
Combine structured and unstructured context in the same package
A supplier bank-account-change decision may need current operational truth, retrieved evidence, calculated features, knowledge relationships, policy facts, and tool observations.
Treat transformations as application behavior
Chunking, OCR, extraction, redaction, summarization, normalization, aggregation, and feature calculation can change what the decision actually sees.
Keep context fresh enough for the decision
Effective time, observed time, permitted staleness, expiry, point-in-time requirements, and revalidation keep context from outliving its business meaning.
Map the Context Package for one consequential AI decision.
Use an architecture review to identify context roles, eligibility, sufficiency, freshness, transformations, memory boundaries, and provenance for one application path.