# Agent context

URL: /start/agents/agent-context · Id: `page:start/agents/agent-context`

> Every agent wakes with its Role's view as a Markdown block of at most 150 tokens, each line a handle it can expand and a number it can cite.

Every [Agent](/business/nouns/agent) wakes with its [Role](/business/nouns/role)'s view in context: a Markdown block of at most 150 tokens. Each line ends in a handle the agent expands when it needs more.

## The block
The marketing lead at lensloop.market, a marketplace for used camera gear, wakes at 09:12 to this block.

```md
view:lensloop.market?role=marketing-lead&w=2026Q4W4 · 09:12 · @e81f
Needs you
- Ad spend +$400/day · closes 14:00 · pause | redirect | cancel [act:a91]
Goals
- Activation 34% → 40% · behind, pace 37% · p72 of 140 marketplaces [kr:2]
- Outside revenue $5.2k → $8k · on pace [kr:1]
Exceptions
- Acquisition cost $212 · ▲18% wk · outside band [m:cac]
+6 on track [rest]
```

The first line states the [view address](/code/views/view-address), the time and the watermark, once. Every other line follows one grammar: `subject · value → target · state · trend · [handle]`. The legend lives once in the [Worker](/business/nouns/worker)'s instructions, so the block spends no tokens explaining itself.

Absence is typed, never zero. `—` means no value yet, `unset (owner: Founder)` names who sets it, and `test` marks a number from test records.

## Budgets
One ranking fills three budgets: 150 tokens on every wake, 600 for a briefing, and 2,000 for a review. The highest-value lines go in first, and the rest collapse into the tail count. A number off its pace or outside its noise band ranks higher, so it reaches every agent whose Role it touches without anyone asking.

## Handles expand
Each handle opens the next level through MCP `fetch`, resolved at the block's watermark. `kr:2` returns the [Key Result](/business/nouns/key-result)'s trail and its contributors; those return their [Events](/business/nouns/event). The block is an index, not a lossy summary.

```json
{ "name": "fetch", "arguments": { "id": "kr:2" } }
```

A call line maps one to one onto a `do` call. Pausing the ad spend raise is `$.Action.pause({ action: 'a91' })`, the same [Verb](/business/nouns/verb) a person's button calls, writing the same [Decision](/business/nouns/decision). An agent's citation of `[m:cac]` opens the same number for the person who reads its reasoning.

## Deltas and replay
After the first wake, an agent receives only what changed since the watermark it last saw. Every block pins its watermark and the [Versions](/business/nouns/version) of the definitions behind it. Replaying a Decision replays the numbers the agent saw, and [evals](/agents/evals) run against the context of any past wake.

## Priorities arrive as Goals
No free text is ever pinned into an agent's context. A parent's priority reaches its children as a [Goal](/business/nouns/goal), and a [Play](/business/nouns/play)'s directive reaches its [Cohort](/business/nouns/cohort) as the Play record. Both are versioned, revertible and reviewed before they reach any agent.

The block's shape is itself an [Experiment](/business/nouns/experiment). Ranking weights, tiers and budgets run as arms per Role, scored on replayed wakes by task success, Decision quality, handle expansions and tokens spent.