Context Management Skill

Multi-agent workflow orchestration with state persistence, handoff patterns, and resumable workflows.

Description

This skill enables sophisticated multi-agent workflows through context save/restore operations, supporting sequential handoffs, parallel execution, conditional routing, and long-running resumable workflows.

Token Efficiency Awareness

Multi-agent architectures have significant token costs. Understand the multipliers:

Key insight: A 3-agent workflow costs ~15x more than a single agent. Design accordingly.

What's Included

Examples (examples/)

• Sequential handoff - Linear 4-phase workflow (Design → Implement → Test → Deploy)
• Parallel execution - Full-stack feature with frontend + backend + tests (2.25x speedup)
• Conditional routing - Dynamic agent selection based on results
• Resumable workflows - Checkpoint-based long-running tasks

Reference Guides (reference/)

• Complete reference - Save/restore operations, workflow patterns, performance optimization
• Token efficiency - Token multipliers, attention budget, context optimization strategies
• Troubleshooting guide - 6 issue categories with solutions (save failures, restore failures, performance, corruption)
• Best practices - Context design, handoff patterns, error handling, security

Templates (templates/)

• JSON Schema - Context structure validation with required/optional fields
• Context templates - Ready-to-use structures for different workflow types

Checklists (checklists/)

• 100-point verification - Comprehensive validation across 10 categories with weighted scoring

Workflow Patterns

1. Sequential Handoff - Agent A → Context Save → Agent B → Context Save → Agent C
2. Parallel Execution - Parent spawns 3 agents → Merge results → Integration
3. Conditional Routing - Analyze → Route based on conditions → Targeted agent
4. Resumable Long-Running - Checkpoints enable resume after interruption

Performance Metrics

• Context Size: Target <100KB for 80% of workflows
• Serialization: <200ms (P99)
• Restore: <500ms (P99)
• Speedup: 2-3x faster with parallel execution

Use This Skill When

• Building multi-agent workflows
• Need state persistence across sessions
• Coordinating multiple agents on complex tasks
• Implementing resumable long-running processes
• Optimizing workflow execution time

Related Agents

• context-manager - Automated context save/restore with validation
• tdd-orchestrator - Multi-agent TDD workflows
• incident-responder - Multi-phase incident response

Quick Start

# View workflow examples
cat examples/feature-development-handoff.md
cat examples/parallel-workflow-example.md

# Check reference guides
cat reference/INDEX.md
cat reference/workflow-best-practices.md

# Use context schema
cat templates/context-schema-template.json

# Validate context
cat checklists/context-verification-checklist.md

Security

• ✅ Never save secrets in context (use secret references)
• ✅ Implement access control for context files
• ✅ Sanitize before saving (remove API keys, passwords)
• ✅ Use relative file paths (not absolute)

Skill Version: 1.0 Last Updated: 2025-01-15