Thanks for responding to the meta‑level post — that already tells me you’re operating above the prompt‑and‑output layer. Most people stay inside the model’s behaviour; very few work on the structures that govern behaviour. If you’re dealing with things like state‑aware boundaries, context‑gating rules, or workflow‑level invariants, then you’re already in the territory I’m mapping.The article here makes a good point about the system around the model shaping behaviour, but the meta‑layer goes one step further: it’s where you define the rules that govern the system itself. That’s the layer where coherence, constraint, and stability are engineered, not prompted. If that’s the space you’re working in, then we’re speaking the same language.Happy to compare notes if you’re genuinely operating at that altitude — the meta‑level is a small room, and it’s rare to meet someone else who’s actually in it.🙂
and yes, i’m pretty sure we’re pointing at overlapping territory from different angles. my write-up comes from an operational/system-design perspective because it came out of a project i was working on, and i needed a practical place to connect the article to a repo i could share with people.
so the audience was different: more developers, product teams, and people who need to turn the layer into something designable, testable, and reviewable.
i also think we may be approaching the topic from different starting points, maybe, which is interesting :)
happy to continue the conversation if you’d like. i’ve been looking for people thinking in this general space too, and found a few through another article i wrote on linkedin.
Appreciate the clarity — and yes, I think we’re approaching the same territory from different entry points. Your operational/system‑design angle makes sense for the audience you were writing for; my work sits a layer above that, where the concern isn’t just how the system shapes behaviour, but how the governing constraints shape the system itself.That’s why I talk about things like workflow‑level invariants and context‑gating rules — not as implementation details, but as the structures that determine what kinds of behaviours are even possible downstream. When two people recognise that layer from different directions, it usually means the conceptual space is genuinely shared.Happy to continue the conversation — it’s rare to find someone who’s actually working in this band rather than just gesturing at it.
I'm going to move some of the other stuff I wrote to substack soon -- trying to get myself organized (still different audiences tho!)... and go through your articles to see where we are at and where we converge. Let's keep talking :)
I’m just enjoying the novelty of finding someone who’s actually thinking in this space rather than orbiting around it. It’ll be interesting to see where our frames overlap once you’ve had a chance to look through things. Happy to keep the thread going and see where the conversation naturally converges.🙂
Love this detailed breakdown of how to think about the complexity of context architecture, beyond the "put it in a prompt" or "just give an agent memory" (whatever that means 🙄).
This is a rapidly evolving area and it's refreshing to read a breakdown of it that treats it both as a technical problem and as a craft.
But the million dollar question: How do we manage all this at scale?
Databases are terrible because they obscure the prompts from your coding agents (unless you go through all the work to set up API connection to the data) and make versioning & audit is more tedious.
Git-managed .md file trees -- like the one linked in this post -- seem the only workable solution right now, but introduce their own management headaches after just 2-3 agents of even medium complexity.
One thing I’m curious about — when you talk about connecting the operational layer to something designable and reviewable, what assumptions do you treat as fixed at that level? I’m asking because the meta‑layer work I do only stabilises when the “governing constraints” are treated as first‑class objects rather than emergent properties of the workflow.In other words, do you treat invariants as something the system discovers through design, or something the system must inherit from a higher‑order frame? The answer tends to reveal whether two people are actually working in the same conceptual space or just using similar language from different altitudes.Happy to compare notes — I’m genuinely curious in how you structure that boundary?
some invariants are inherited from the higher-order frame, like permission boundaries. and some r discovered through workflow design, like routing conditions. .
the boundary is structured by asking whether the rule governs the whole system or only a specific workflow state. if it governs the whole system, it becomes part of the context architecture. If it is workflow-specific, it belongs in workflow rules.
this from an operational perspective.
from a more abstract perspective, if you're talking about something "above the workflow" then it depends on what you're trying to do. the concept of the framework is re-usable but the context architecture needs to be designed per system.
Thanks for responding to the meta‑level post — that already tells me you’re operating above the prompt‑and‑output layer. Most people stay inside the model’s behaviour; very few work on the structures that govern behaviour. If you’re dealing with things like state‑aware boundaries, context‑gating rules, or workflow‑level invariants, then you’re already in the territory I’m mapping.The article here makes a good point about the system around the model shaping behaviour, but the meta‑layer goes one step further: it’s where you define the rules that govern the system itself. That’s the layer where coherence, constraint, and stability are engineered, not prompted. If that’s the space you’re working in, then we’re speaking the same language.Happy to compare notes if you’re genuinely operating at that altitude — the meta‑level is a small room, and it’s rare to meet someone else who’s actually in it.🙂
altitude: check. 😊
and yes, i’m pretty sure we’re pointing at overlapping territory from different angles. my write-up comes from an operational/system-design perspective because it came out of a project i was working on, and i needed a practical place to connect the article to a repo i could share with people.
so the audience was different: more developers, product teams, and people who need to turn the layer into something designable, testable, and reviewable.
i also think we may be approaching the topic from different starting points, maybe, which is interesting :)
happy to continue the conversation if you’d like. i’ve been looking for people thinking in this general space too, and found a few through another article i wrote on linkedin.
Appreciate the clarity — and yes, I think we’re approaching the same territory from different entry points. Your operational/system‑design angle makes sense for the audience you were writing for; my work sits a layer above that, where the concern isn’t just how the system shapes behaviour, but how the governing constraints shape the system itself.That’s why I talk about things like workflow‑level invariants and context‑gating rules — not as implementation details, but as the structures that determine what kinds of behaviours are even possible downstream. When two people recognise that layer from different directions, it usually means the conceptual space is genuinely shared.Happy to continue the conversation — it’s rare to find someone who’s actually working in this band rather than just gesturing at it.
I'm going to move some of the other stuff I wrote to substack soon -- trying to get myself organized (still different audiences tho!)... and go through your articles to see where we are at and where we converge. Let's keep talking :)
I’m just enjoying the novelty of finding someone who’s actually thinking in this space rather than orbiting around it. It’ll be interesting to see where our frames overlap once you’ve had a chance to look through things. Happy to keep the thread going and see where the conversation naturally converges.🙂
Love this detailed breakdown of how to think about the complexity of context architecture, beyond the "put it in a prompt" or "just give an agent memory" (whatever that means 🙄).
This is a rapidly evolving area and it's refreshing to read a breakdown of it that treats it both as a technical problem and as a craft.
But the million dollar question: How do we manage all this at scale?
Databases are terrible because they obscure the prompts from your coding agents (unless you go through all the work to set up API connection to the data) and make versioning & audit is more tedious.
Git-managed .md file trees -- like the one linked in this post -- seem the only workable solution right now, but introduce their own management headaches after just 2-3 agents of even medium complexity.
Any better solutions here?
Yes!! I'm working on that next! LOL. I can tell you more when we chat!
One thing I’m curious about — when you talk about connecting the operational layer to something designable and reviewable, what assumptions do you treat as fixed at that level? I’m asking because the meta‑layer work I do only stabilises when the “governing constraints” are treated as first‑class objects rather than emergent properties of the workflow.In other words, do you treat invariants as something the system discovers through design, or something the system must inherit from a higher‑order frame? The answer tends to reveal whether two people are actually working in the same conceptual space or just using similar language from different altitudes.Happy to compare notes — I’m genuinely curious in how you structure that boundary?
some invariants are inherited from the higher-order frame, like permission boundaries. and some r discovered through workflow design, like routing conditions. .
the boundary is structured by asking whether the rule governs the whole system or only a specific workflow state. if it governs the whole system, it becomes part of the context architecture. If it is workflow-specific, it belongs in workflow rules.
this from an operational perspective.
from a more abstract perspective, if you're talking about something "above the workflow" then it depends on what you're trying to do. the concept of the framework is re-usable but the context architecture needs to be designed per system.