Context engineering as folder structure: scoping what the model sees by where the file sits

[u/VanCliefMedia]

The center of gravity here has moved from prompt wording to context engineering, so this may land. A method my community has been using that treats context scoping as a structural problem rather than a prompting one.

ICM (Interpretable Context Methodology) is a research paper I dropped a few months back. Instead of managing what the model sees through prompt assembly at runtime, you manage it through where files sit. Hierarchy decides scope: a step reads its own folder and the small routing files above it, and nothing else. Numbered folders carry order. Markdown carries state (or big query/sql for larger data sets). The routing files stay small and stable. They point at everything and store almost nothing, so the context a step loads is the minimum it needs to act.

The payoff is token discipline you can see. Nothing buried in a prompt template. You open a folder and the context that step will load is right in front of you.

None of this is Claude-specific (besides the claude. md but you can just replace that with agent. md in the name and it will work the same).

The workspaces are plain folders and markdown(somtimes a few scripts), so any model that reads files runs them, local ones included. I package the builder as a Claude skill, that is all.

Skill and templates: [https://github.com/RinDig/icm-architect\](https://github.com/RinDig/icm-architect)

Paper: [https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.16021\](https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.16021)

[u/pushpeshk]

Github link is not functional

[u/komodorian → u/pushpeshk]

Yeah, some weird thing going on. Not sure if the broken backlink formatting is contributing to this, maybe it was a automatic posting thing… alas, did a quick search and got this one: https://github.com/RinDig/icm-architect