Guides writing enforceable conventions, stack declarations, and context for HARNESS.md to help LLMs follow project standards and aid team onboarding.
How this skill is triggered — by the user, by Claude, or both
Slash command
/ai-literacy-superpowers:context-engineeringThe summary Claude sees in its skill listing — used to decide when to auto-load this skill
Context engineering is the practice of curating the knowledge an LLM
Context engineering is the practice of curating the knowledge an LLM needs to work effectively in a codebase. Good context makes the difference between an LLM that follows project conventions and one that generates plausible but inconsistent code.
Birgitta Boeckeler's key insight: the code design itself is a huge part of the context. Well-structured code communicates intent; the harness documentation makes that intent explicit and enforceable.
The Context section serves three audiences simultaneously:
Declare the factual baseline: languages, build system, test framework,
container strategy. Keep this section factual — no aspirations, just
what is true today. The harness-discoverer agent populates this
during /harness-init.
Conventions are the core of context engineering. Each convention must be concrete enough that a reviewer could objectively say whether code follows it. The test: could two independent reviewers agree without discussing it?
For detailed examples of well-written vs poorly-written conventions,
consult references/convention-patterns.md.
Before adding a convention, ask:
If the answer to any question is no, the convention needs rewriting.
Start with what the team values. Ask: "What would I see in code that follows this?" Write the observable properties as the convention.
| Aspiration | Observable convention |
|---|---|
| "Write clean code" | Not enforceable — decompose further |
| "Keep functions short" | "Functions must not exceed 40 lines" |
| "Use meaningful names" | "Variables must be 3+ characters except i, j, k, err" |
| "Handle errors properly" | "Every returned error must be wrapped with context" |
Organise conventions by what they govern:
Context rots. The harness-gc agent checks for documentation freshness
as a garbage collection rule. Symptoms of stale context:
The /harness-audit command detects some of these automatically by
cross-referencing HARNESS.md against the project's actual state.
references/convention-patterns.md — Detailed examples of
enforceable vs unenforceable conventions, the enforceability spectrum,
and techniques for converting aspirations to observable rulesnpx claudepluginhub habitat-thinking/ai-literacy-superpowers --plugin ai-literacy-superpowersOptimizes agent context setup by structuring rules files, specs, source code, and error output hierarchically.
Explains harness engineering framework for AI code quality: context engineering, architectural constraints, and garbage collection via living HARNESS.md documents.
Elicits, drafts, aligns, and persists team coding conventions and working agreements as versioned artifacts (convention doc and/or project rule). Use when setting up shared norms or reconciling conflicting style decisions.