Individual skill
agent-startup-and-context-ingestion
Use when designing or auditing how an agent becomes useful after launch — AGENTS.md overlays, role files, skills, rig specs, workflow specs, startup checklists, refocus messages, "rig context" surface. Covers the 4 failure modes that make startup context fail (old rig spec misses current operating mode; current agents never told about new guidance; startup file as dumping ground; orchestrator transmits implementation without preserving product intent).
skills/_canonical/core/agent-startup-and-context-ingestion/SKILL.md
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- Apache-2.0
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# Agent Startup and Context Ingestion
How an agent becomes useful after launch: **AGENTS.md overlays, role
files, skills, rig specs, workflow specs, startup checklists, refocus
messages**, and the current `rig context` retrieval and profile surface.
It is the current concrete startup path inside the broader
context-engineering-and-retrieval primitive. Startup gets a seat into
the right initial shape; context engineering is the larger question of
how a seat gets the right context for the work it is doing right now.
**Most coordination failures are not tool failures; they are context
failures.** Agents need to know their role, operating mode, coordination
convention, boundaries, and current product intent. If startup context