Context Engineering

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<h1 className={styles.pageTitle}>Context Engineering</h1> <p className={styles.pageDescription}> Context engineering is about building background knowledge, preferences, and workflows that help goose work more effectively. Instead of repeating instructions, you define them once and teach goose how you work. </p> <div className={styles.categorySection}> <h2 className={styles.categoryTitle}>📚 Documentation & Guides</h2> <div className={styles.cardGrid}> <Card title="Using goosehints" description="Use AGENTS.md, .goosehints, and other files to provide project context, preferences, and instructions that goose loads automatically." link="/docs/guides/context-engineering/using-goosehints" /> <Card title="Using Skills" description="Create reusable instruction sets containing workflows, scripts, and other resources that goose can load on demand." link="/docs/guides/context-engineering/using-skills" /> <Card title="Plugins" description="Install, update, and manage packages that extend goose with skills, hooks, and other reusable components." link="/docs/guides/context-engineering/plugins" /> <Card title="Hooks" description="Run scripts when goose starts sessions, submits prompts, calls tools, edits files, or executes shell commands." link="/docs/guides/context-engineering/hooks" /> <Card title="Custom Slash Commands" description="Create custom shortcuts to quickly run reusable instructions in any chat session with simple slash commands." link="/docs/guides/context-engineering/slash-commands" /> <Card title="Prompt Templates" description="Customize the built-in prompts that define how goose responds, plans, compacts context, and creates recipes." link="/docs/guides/context-engineering/prompt-templates" /> <Card title="Subagents" description="Delegate focused tasks to isolated goose instances that can run sequentially or in parallel." link="/docs/guides/context-engineering/subagents" /> <Card title="Using gooseignore" description="Prevent goose from accessing sensitive files and directories by defining global or project-specific ignore rules." link="/docs/guides/context-engineering/using-gooseignore" /> <Card title="Creating Plans" description="Use planning mode to break complex work into clear, manageable steps before goose starts implementation." link="/docs/guides/context-engineering/creating-plans" /> <Card title="Persistent Instructions" description="Inject critical reminders into goose's working memory every turn. Ideal for security guardrails and behavioral rules that must never be forgotten." link="/docs/guides/context-engineering/using-persistent-instructions" /> <Card title="Memory Extension" description="Teach goose persistent knowledge it can recall across sessions. Save commands, code snippets, and preferences for consistent assistance." link="/docs/mcp/memory-mcp" /> <Card title="Research → Plan → Implement Pattern" description="See how slash commands make it easy to integrate instructions into interactive RPI workflows." link="/docs/tutorials/rpi" /> </div> </div> <div className={styles.categorySection}> <h2 className={styles.categoryTitle}>📝 Featured Blog Posts</h2> <div className={styles.cardGrid}> <Card title="What's in my .goosehints file" description="A deep dive into .goosehints vs Memory Extension, and how to optimize your goose configuration for better performance." link="/blog/2025/06/05/whats-in-my-goosehints-file" /> <Card title="Stop Your AI Agent From Making Unwanted Changes" description="Teach your AI agent how to commit early and often so you can control changes and roll back safely." link="/blog/2025/12/10/stop-ai-agent-unwanted-changes" /> <Card title="The AI Skeptic's Guide to Context Windows" description="Why do AI agents forget? Learn how context windows, tokens, and goose help you manage memory and long conversations." link="/blog/2025/08/18/understanding-context-windows" /> <Card title="Hooks: run your own scripts on every goose event" description="Learn how lifecycle hooks let you react to session, prompt, tool, file, and shell events with your own scripts." link="/blog/2026/05/14/goose-hooks" /> </div> </div>