Beyond the Prompt

Engineering Context for Smarter AI Agents

The secret to a truly helpful product AI isn't just a better LLM—it's a superior context strategy. Discover how to transform your AI from a generic chatbot into an indispensable, expert assistant.

The Impact of Context

Providing relevant, real-time information drastically improves AI performance, turning frustrating interactions into valuable outcomes.

+40%

Accuracy Boost

Grounded responses based on factual, up-to-date information.

-75%

Hallucinations

Reduces instances of incorrect or fabricated information.

+60%

User Trust

Reliable answers build confidence and encourage adoption.

The Core Process: Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)

Context engineering is primarily powered by RAG. This process finds relevant information from your private data sources and provides it to the LLM at the time of a query, ensuring responses are timely and accurate.

User Query

Retrieve Relevant Context

(from Docs, DBs, APIs)

Assemble Prompt

(Context + Query + Instructions)

LLM Generation

Grounded AI Response

The Pillars of Effective Context Engineering

Building a robust context strategy relies on several key best practices. Mastering these pillars is essential for creating a reliable and intelligent product AI agent.

Pillar 1: Architect a Multi-Layered Context Strategy

A successful agent doesn't rely on a single source of truth. It integrates various layers of information to form a complete understanding. This chart shows a balanced mix for a typical product AI.

Pillar 2: Optimize Retrieval with Hybrid Search

Finding the right context is crucial. While vector (semantic) search is powerful for understanding intent, combining it with keyword (lexical) search handles specific terms and codes far more effectively, boosting overall accuracy.

Pillar 3: Improve Accuracy with Structured Prompts

How you format the context for the LLM matters. Clearly separating context from instructions using tags (e.g., <context>) helps the model focus on the right data, significantly reducing errors.

-25%

Factual Errors

when using structured data formats in prompts

Pillar 4: Drive Growth with a Feedback Loop

Context engineering is not static. By monitoring agent performance, analyzing failures, and continuously refining the knowledge base and retrieval strategies, you can achieve consistent improvements in accuracy over time.