Context Engineering for Agents

BlogApr 21, 2026

Original excerpt

Agents need context to perform tasks. Context engineering is the art and science of filling the context window with just the right information at each step of an agent’s trajectory. In this post, we break down some common strategies — write, select, compress, and isolate — for context engineering by reviewing various popular agents and papers. We then explain how LangGraph is designed to support them!

As Andrej Karpathy puts it, LLMs are like a new kind of operating system. The LLM is like the CPU and its context window is like the RAM, serving as the model’s working memory. Just like RAM, the LLM context window has limited capacity to handle various sources of context. And just as an…

Frequently asked questions

What is "Context Engineering for Agents" about?

This article by Context Engineering is part of the Context Engineering reading list on Burn 451, covering prompts · mcp · agent context.

Who wrote "Context Engineering for Agents"?

This piece is part of the Context Engineering vault on Burn 451, covering prompts · mcp · agent context. The original author is attributed at the source link.

How can I read more content from Context Engineering?

The complete Context Engineering reading list is available at burn451.cloud/vault/context-engineering. Each article includes an AI-generated summary so you can decide what to read in seconds. Connect the Burn 451 MCP server to Claude or Cursor to query all Context Engineering articles as live AI context.

Can I use "Context Engineering for Agents" with Claude or Cursor?

Yes. Install the burn-mcp-server npm package and connect it to Claude Desktop, Claude Code, or Cursor. Once connected, your AI can search and reference this article and the full Context Engineering vault in real time — no manual copy-paste required.

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