Context Glossary

Browse 10 context terms defined in plain English, from the cultural dictionary of computing.

10 Context Terms

AI Memory
A mechanism that allows an AI system to retain, retrieve, or reuse information from prior interactions, documents, or state beyond a single immediate prompt....
Application Context
The collection of runtime state, dependencies, environment information, and framework-managed objects available to an application or component while it runs....
Async Context
The logical execution context that travels across asynchronous boundaries so code can still access request IDs, tracing data, auth state, or other scoped...
Context Distillation
A technique for training or adapting models so they internalize behaviors that would otherwise require large context at inference time. The goal is to compress...
Context Propagation
The carrying of request-scoped metadata such as trace IDs, auth claims, locale, or tenant information across function boundaries, asynchronous tasks, threads,...
Model Context
The information available to a model at inference time, including the prompt, conversation history, retrieved documents, tool outputs, and other supplied...
Model Context Protocol
An open protocol for connecting models to external tools, resources, and prompts through a consistent interface.
Multi-Turn
Describing an interaction that spans multiple back-and-forth turns rather than a single one-shot request and response. Multi-turn behavior requires the system...
RAG Context
The retrieved material inserted into a prompt as supporting context for a retrieval-augmented generation system. RAG context needs to be relevant and concise...
Sequence Length
The number of tokens or elements in a sequence processed by a model. Sequence length affects memory use, compute cost, and how much context a system can handle...

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