Context Loader

Context Loader renders deterministic, bounded context for one local Git working tree. The default CLI output remains Markdown; a stable JSON interface is also available for machine callers. The tool reads repository state and a fixed set of root files without fetching, executing repository code, network access, or writes to the target repository. Runtime code uses only the Python standard library.

Open-source quick start

Current stable release: 1.3.2. Local CLI for coding-agent workflows; renders deterministic Markdown or JSON.

uv tool install 'context-loader==1.3.2'

pip install 'context-loader==1.3.2'

project-context --repo /path/to/repo

project-context --repo /path/to/repo --format json

Install

Source version: 1.3.2. Install its matching published release or an exact source commit.

Install via uv:

uv tool install 'context-loader==1.3.2'

Install via pip:

pip install 'context-loader==1.3.2'

For development or source-based installs tracking current repository (1.3.2):

uv tool install git+https://github.com/xuanheng-tech/context-loader.git

The repository also retains ./project-context as a direct development entry point.

Distributions

The sole distribution is context-loader, containing the context_loader runtime and the project-context console script. Version 1.0.0 broke the CLI name and Markdown heading contract while leaving the then-current JSON schema unchanged. Terminal and any executor call this same entry point with explicit repository and focus arguments; no provider adapter or private session state is involved.

Previously published packages and historical release records remain unchanged. The new release publishes no compatibility distribution or legacy executable alias.

The wheel installs the runtime package only. The source distribution additionally carries tool_cli_contract.json, so a package-only consumer can pin the declared public CLI contract without cloning. The test suite, justfile and lockfile stay in the Git repository and are not part of either distribution; run them from a checkout of the matching tag.

Platform and Runtime Requirements

• Python: Python 3.12 (>=3.12,<3.13). Runtime code uses only the Python standard library with zero runtime dependencies.
• Git: Requires the standard git CLI at the fixed absolute path /usr/bin/git. The executable is never resolved through PATH, so an installation elsewhere is not used and every invocation fails with exit 1. Git runs with a sanitized environment that ignores system, global and per-command configuration, attributes, and hooks.
• Operating System: supported and locally tested on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS; CI also tests the GitHub-hosted Ubuntu runner. Other Linux/POSIX systems are unverified, not a portability promise. Windows is not supported.

Deterministic means byte-identical output for the same tool version, CLI arguments, canonical repository path, readable file contents, directory entries, Git state/local refs, and relevant Git configuration, with no concurrent changes. Different checkout paths, permissions, Git versions or working-tree contents can change the output. The tool does not freeze a repository snapshot.

Output can contain sensitive information from the repository itself: README/instructions, declared commands, paths, branch names and commit subjects. Fixed file selection and size limits are not automatic redaction. Inspect the output before sharing it with a person or external service.

Usage

project-context --version
project-context --repo /home/user/projects/example
project-context --repo /home/user/projects/example --format markdown
project-context --repo /home/user/projects/example --format json
project-context --repo /home/user/projects/example --format json-compact
project-context --repo /home/user/projects/example \
  --focus "Authentication and session management" \
  --path auth/session.py

--format defaults to markdown. In Markdown mode, --repo retains the 0.1.1 contract: it must be the absolute, canonical root of a non-bare Git working tree. In the json and json-compact modes, an absolute existing directory inside the working tree is accepted; symlinks are normalized and the discovered root is reported as canonical_root. Relative paths, non-Git directories, regular files, and bare repositories are rejected in every mode.

--focus and --path are optional, bounded selection signals for the root AGENTS.md. --path must be repository-relative. The collector does not retain either input in output or audit data. Calls that omit both options remain valid and use the conservative fallback described below. Each value option (--repo, --focus, --path, --format) may be supplied once; duplicates are rejected before collection rather than silently overriding an earlier value.

Markdown Output

Successful repository collection uses schema context-loader/v0.1 and emits these sections in order:

1. Git State, including bounded working-tree changes
2. Development Instructions
3. Project Overview
4. Declared Commands
5. Project Entry Files
6. Recent Commits
7. Directory Tree

The output has no generated timestamp, AI summary, architecture inference, or diff body.

JSON Output

--format json writes exactly one separator-compact UTF-8 JSON document plus one trailing newline to stdout, within the JSON document bound under “Limits”. Keys are serialized in sorted order with ensure_ascii=False. --format json-compact uses the identical serialization; only the field set differs, as described under “Compact model consumption”. The declared contract for --format json is:

{
  "schema_version": 3,
  "tool": {
    "name": "context-loader",
    "version": "1.3.2"
  },
  "repository": {
    "requested_path": "/canonical/requested/path",
    "canonical_root": "/canonical/worktree/root"
  },
  "sources": [
    {
      "ordinal": 0,
      "kind": "agents",
      "scope": "repository",
      "path": "/canonical/worktree/root/AGENTS.md",
      "content_sha256": "sha256-hex",
      "content": "actual selected source text",
      "selection": {
        "source": "AGENTS.md",
        "selected_sections": [],
        "indexed_only_sections": [],
        "chars_selected": 0,
        "chars_omitted": 0,
        "truncated": false,
        "parse_fallback": false,
        "source_scan_truncated": false,
        "index_truncated": false
      }
    }
  ],
  "context": "the same assembled Markdown context",
  "context_sha256": "sha256-hex",
  "statuses": [],
  "nested_context": {
    "files": ["docs/AGENTS.md"],
    "list_truncated": false,
    "scan_truncated": false
  },
  "warnings": []
}

context_sha256 hashes the UTF-8 bytes of context; each content_sha256 does the same for that source's content body as rendered (after newline normalization, any AGENTS.md section selection and any truncation marker) — never for the raw bytes of the file at path, which match only for unselected, untruncated LF files. sources contains only file bodies that actually enter the final context, in assembly order, after the existing newline normalization and truncation rules. scope distinguishes repository from global; version 1.0.0's fixed root-file selection currently emits only repository sources and does not add any global-file discovery.

statuses lists machine-readable collection and render conditions that previously appeared only inside context Markdown — plus the nested-context truncation flags, which exist only in machine form: skipped or absent sources, truncated sources, unreadable directory-tree entries, directory-tree entries whose directory holds more entries than one enumeration examines, sections omitted under the global output budget, truncated working-tree, declared-command or directory-tree listings, and truncated nested-AGENTS.md presence reports. A skipped or absent source reports the code of the condition the collector observed (not_present, skipped_symlink, skipped_not_regular, skipped_encoding, skipped_unreadable); the sentence in context is rendered from that same condition, so wording and code cannot drift apart. Each entry has stable code, subject_kind, and subject fields. The two nested_agents_* codes mirror the nested_context truncation booleans for consumers that branch only on statuses; the full nested_context object remains a first-class field, never folded into statuses. Callers can ignore statuses safely.

The optional selection object is present only on a rendered AGENTS.md source. Its section entries contain heading, heading level, and fixed selection reasons; it never contains the original focus or target path. Existing per-source fields remain unchanged; the document's exact key set (which includes nested_context) is named by its schema_version, described below.

nested_context is always present and existence-only: files lists repository-relative paths of non-directory AGENTS.md entries under subdirectories, found by a bounded scan that enumerates directory entries, never opens or reads a candidate file and never traverses a symlink; it carries no sizes, no mtimes and no contents. A symlinked (even dangling) AGENTS.md is listed, because its existence comes from the directory entry itself; the scan never resolves what it points at. Any .git, .venv, venv, node_modules or site-packages directory is skipped at every depth: package-manager and interpreter-managed trees are not authored repository instructions. list_truncated means more matching entries exist beyond the report caps: 32 paths, and a 4 KiB budget metered on the emitted array itself — each path's escaped, JSON-serialized string plus its separator, with the array's brackets charged to the first entry — so the emitted array never costs more than the budget it declares. Because quoting is counted, an array already near the cap can report one path fewer than an older release did, and then says so through list_truncated. scan_truncated means the depth (4) or directory-count (2,000) budget was reached, a directory held more entries than one enumeration examines (1,024), or a directory or entry could not be read, so absence of a path is not proof of absence of the file. Nested paths are sanitized with the same escaping the Markdown uses for repository-derived text, so a nested name the filesystem could not decode never breaks the document; see “Limits” for the root paths that are emitted verbatim. The corresponding nested_agents_list_truncated and nested_agents_scan_truncated status entries mirror both flags. Presence is not instruction: whether a nested file applies, and its text, remain the caller's judgment; Markdown output is unchanged.

Compact model consumption (--format json-compact)

--format json-compact emits a schema_version 4 document: exactly the version-3 document with sources[*].content omitted. Every other field — context, context_sha256, statuses, nested_context, warnings, tool, repository, and each source's ordinal, kind, scope, path, content_sha256 and optional selection — is identical to --format json for the same arguments. sources is provenance and index metadata, not the place a body must be fetched from: every omitted body is already inside context verbatim, so consumers should read context for rule text and reopen a source file only when the rendered body was truncated or selected away — never to recover a body that the document already carried. The projection exists because the selected source bodies already occur verbatim inside context, so carrying them again in sources duplicates a large share of the document bytes (measured up to ~44% on real worktrees, scaling with how much of context those bodies occupy) for a model consumer without adding information. Nothing is lost: each omitted body remains inside context, content_sha256 still fingerprints that rendered body, and path plus canonical_root locate the underlying file for a bounded manual re-read (whose raw bytes may differ from the rendered body as defined above). schema_version is an exact document selector, not an upgrade marker: version 4 is a field-set projection of version 3, so consumers must branch on the value and must not apply >=-superset reasoning. Introducing this compact format does not otherwise change default Markdown bytes, exit codes or determinism.

One historical exception is acknowledged: releases 1.0.0 and 1.1.0 both emitted schema_version 1 although 1.1.0 added the top-level statuses key. From release 1.2.0 onward each emitted number names exactly one key set, and a new number is issued whenever a key set would otherwise be reused.

The JSON schema version and package version are independent: this build emits schema_version 3 for --format json and 4 for --format json-compact, while tool.version is 1.3.2. Version 1 and 2 are the exact shapes already published in release 1.2.0 and are never reused: because nested_context changes the default document's key set, version 3 names the current full-document key set and version 4 names the compact projection. Callers must depend only on fields declared above. The document contains no generated time or random identifier, so unchanged input produces identical JSON bytes. On failure, stdout remains empty and stderr contains only a short diagnostic.

Authority Boundary

Context Loader is a bounded transport for repository-root context, not the authority for a repository's instruction hierarchy. It reads the fixed root candidates listed below, renders them under explicit limits, and stops there.

Resolving an instruction hierarchy stays with the calling agent harness. That includes any shared or user-level instruction file outside the repository, nested or scoped AGENTS.md files under subdirectories, and any include or import directive written inside an instruction file: such a directive is transported as literal text and is never followed. --path selects sections of the repository-root AGENTS.md only; it never changes which files are read. The JSON-only nested_context field reports the existence of nested AGENTS.md paths without reading them; deciding whether any of them applies stays with the calling agent harness exactly as before.

A successful run therefore proves that the bounded root context was collected and rendered. It does not prove that every instruction applicable to a task has been loaded.

Supported Root Files

Only these exact files directly under the Git root are eligible:

• Development instructions: AGENTS.md
• Project overview: README.md
• Entry files, in fixed order: pyproject.toml, justfile or Justfile, package.json, Makefile, Cargo.toml, and go.mod

Lowercase justfile takes precedence over Justfile. Nested files, lockfiles, CI configuration, .env, and glob-discovered files are not read.

A leading UTF-8 byte order mark is removed from the root AGENTS.md before parsing, so a heading on the first line is still recognized as a heading.

The root AGENTS.md is split at Markdown headings outside fenced code blocks. The output always starts with complete early sections fitting a 4-KiB head, then adds complete relevant sections in source order using exact normalized focus/path tokens and their parent context. Remaining headings appear in an explicit index whose body text is not loaded. With no selection signals, only the small head and index are emitted. Unsafe heading parsing falls back to a bounded head and an explicit manual-recovery notice. A head whose own headings would not fit the budget falls back to the same bounded head without a section index; a single instruction file never fails the whole collection.

Omitted source characters is measured against the whole normalized source, so a bounded source scan that ends before EOF still reports the characters it could not select.

Limits

Final output bounds differ per format. The two stdout bounds below are enforced on the bytes written to stdout and the nested report cap on the bytes the document emits for that array; every other bullet is a per-component, read or capture bound, as each one states:

• Markdown stdout: 98,304 bytes. A section that cannot fit is replaced by an omission notice, and so is every later section, so the limit holds without cutting a section mid-body.
• JSON and JSON-compact stdout: 8,388,608 bytes (8 MiB) for the serialized document, including its trailing newline. This bound is fail-closed: if a repository's evidence cannot fit, the tool exits 1, writes nothing to stdout and prints error: JSON output exceeded the 8388608 byte document limit. It never emits a truncated document. The component budgets below keep legitimate documents far inside it — the largest escape-dense repository audited for this release emitted 263 KiB, of which 248 KiB was escaped statuses subjects — so it is a final backstop rather than an expected truncation point.
• Component budgets below are metered on the Markdown context content, and that same string is the JSON context value; because JSON escaping expands quotes, backslashes and control characters, the serialized bytes can be several times larger. The JSON document also repeats the source bodies, so no single component figure bounds JSON stdout.
• AGENTS.md: 256-KiB bounded source scan; selected source plus selection audit remains at most 16 KiB, including a 4-KiB maximum small head
• README.md: 16 KiB
• Each entry file: 8 KiB
• All entry-file bodies: 24 KiB
• Declared commands: 8 KiB
• Directory tree: 12 KiB of listing body, 300 entries, and depth 2. Each directory is enumerated up to 512 entries, keeping the alphabetically first names so the listing never depends on operating system order. A directory that holds more is reported by a single Listing incomplete: line stating the total, the limit and up to three names, and by at most eight directory_listing_incomplete status entries naming individual directories plus one aggregate entry giving the totals when more directories were capped than are named: beyond the retained examples a capped directory is counted but not individually named, and no listing claims completeness it does not have. That total covers the capped directories the listing reached: a directory is reached only when its parent offered it inside the parent's own alphabetical prefix and the entry budget kept it, so capped siblings displaced by the budget are disclosed as their parent's truncation rather than as separate numbers. Three limits act in sequence and a name survives only if all three leave room. The 512-entry enumeration limit decides which names a directory offers at all; above it only an alphabetical prefix is ever seen. The 300-entry item budget is then shared between a directory's subdirectories and its non-directories: each may take up to half of what remains before the other claims the surplus, which stops alphabetically-earlier directories from evicting every file, but it is a share rather than a floor -- with a single slot left the non-directories take it. The 12 KiB listing budget then decides which kept names are rendered. Descent happens after a directory's own entries, so deep content cannot displace top-level names, but the tool promises no specific file: a root README.md is listed only when all three limits leave room for it -- the enumeration offered it, the entry budget still has a slot, and the byte budget still has room -- and each of those three can fail on its own. Being offered is not the same as an uncapped root: the 512-entry cut drops only the names that sort after its retained prefix, so an early-sorting README.md is still listed from a capped root while a late-sorting one never reaches the listing. Whenever one of the three bites, the listing says so through the note, the marker, or a truncated status instead of presenting itself as complete. The Listing incomplete: line is charged to the 12 KiB listing budget before the body is cut, so the claim can never inflate the section; its cost is paid in listing bytes, so a long note removes that many bytes of entries, and the truncated status plus the marker inside the fence say so. The heading and the code-fence lines are not metered, so the whole Markdown section can exceed 12 KiB by that fixed few dozen bytes.
• Nested AGENTS.md presence scan: depth 4, 2,000 directories, at most 32 reported paths, a 4 KiB budget metered on the emitted array, and at most 1,024 entries examined per directory; file contents are never read
• Working-tree changes: 100 paths and 4 KiB
• Recent commits: 8
• JSON-only listings have no byte budget of their own: statuses subjects are escaped names bounded by the entry counts above, while repository and sources[*].path are emitted verbatim, so a repository root the filesystem could not decode makes the machine formats exit 1 where Markdown still renders
• Git subprocess output: 16 MiB (bounded while reading)
• Candidate file validation: 16 MiB hard read bound

Truncation occurs only at complete UTF-8 and line boundaries and is marked explicitly. These are output/capture limits. Eligible regular files are streamed up to a hard safety limit of 16 MiB to validate UTF-8 and reject NUL bytes, including beyond the captured prefix. A file exceeding this limit or failing validation fails closed and is skipped (Skipped: unreadable. / Skipped: unsupported text encoding.); pathological files cannot require unbounded scanning. Symlinked candidate files are skipped, and directory symlinks are not traversed.

Git State Semantics

Git state is derived only from the working tree and local refs. The command does not fetch or query the remote.

• An unborn working tree reports its symbolic branch name, such as Branch: main, and HEAD: unborn.
• A detached HEAD reports Branch: detached and the resolved commit object ID.
• Upstream is the current branch's configured tracking target. Without one, Upstream: not configured is used.
• A configured target such as origin/main may be shown before its commit is resolvable locally; this is normal after cloning an empty remote.
• Ahead / behind: not available means the commit relationship cannot currently be computed. Counts are reported only when the configured upstream commit is available locally.

Exit Codes

• 0: context or version output completed successfully
• 1: required Git collection or an internal operation failed
• 2: command arguments or the repository path do not satisfy the contract

On nonzero exit, stdout is empty and a bounded diagnostic is written to stderr without a traceback or candidate-file content.

Not Included

Version 1.3.2 does not provide AI summaries, project-type detection, loading or transport of nested AGENTS.md contents (the JSON nested_context field reports bounded existence only), Memory retrieval, semantic ranking, ignore-rule parsing, plugins, profiles, caches, databases, network services, MCP, daemons, GUIs, CI/CD, telemetry, or automatic updates.

Development

Run the complete local check:

just check

Version maintenance

The versions in pyproject.toml and context_loader/__init__.py, the tool_version in tool_cli_contract.json, the matching CHANGELOG.md section, required tests, and the README current-stable declaration plus context-loader==X.Y.Z install pins must change in the same release-preparation batch. CHANGELOG.md is the authoritative version-change record. scripts/release.py rejects README stable/install pins that disagree with the intended package version; historical changelog entries are not part of that check. Merging to master is not a release; formal publication still requires a separately created and pushed tag.

Release closure and retries

GitHub ci and Gitea quality both use just check. GitHub publish-pypi.yml is the only package build/upload authority, using the pypi environment and OIDC Trusted Publishing. GitHub release-record closes the GitHub Release after package publication. Gitea release only verifies the public release, mirrors its exact formal tag object if missing, and closes the Gitea Release record. It builds no package and has no PyPI publishing credentials. No private endpoint or credential is needed on GitHub.

Release checks use Python 3.12, Git, and the runner's existing OpenSSL CLI. They compare downloaded PyPI file bytes, metadata and SHA-256, plus the publisher/tag/commit claims in PyPI's HTTPS-served provenance. This is an identity check, not an independent cryptographic Sigstore verifier.

• Tag/version or expected-commit mismatch and just check failure stop before build/upload.
• Annotated tag headers must match the exact tag name and commit, without extra or duplicate headers.
• The build refuses to run unless dist/ is empty, and refuses any produced file set other than the current version's wheel and sdist. A leftover artifact can carry a release filename while holding different bytes, so it is never treated as the current release.
• A complete matching PyPI version skips both build and upload. Missing/conflicting provenance, unexpected files or differing hashes stop; existing files are never overwritten.
• Release closure runs right after publication, so record, verify and the Gitea sync poll the PyPI index and integrity endpoints for a bounded period before treating a version as missing. Build and upload selection never poll: there, an absent version still means "not yet published".
• A refused release API call reports the bounded server message alongside its status code. A GitHub Release is created against the release commit, so that commit must already be reachable from the public branch; pushing the release commit to the public branch precedes record closure.
• If an upload stopped after one file, rerun the original failed publish job while its original dist artifact is available. It compares the original bytes and selects only missing files. A full rebuild is refused for an incomplete PyPI file set. If the original artifact is gone, stop for recovery; do not substitute a fresh build.
• If PyPI succeeded but a Release failed, rerun release-record on GitHub (manual input: tag) and release on Gitea. Existing matching records pass; a missing record is created once; a draft, differing recorded identity or tag conflict stops without overwriting it.
• Gitea also retries the current project version on master pushes, only after that version has a public tag, verified PyPI files and GitHub Release. An unpublished version reports SKIP. Use the built-in Actions job token for exact missing-tag synchronization: Gitea suppresses recursive workflows for that actor, including old tag workflows. Never use a PAT for this step.
• Keep historical/private tags and archive refs private. Never mirror all refs or push all tags.

Release verification reads the public GitHub API with PUBLIC_GITHUB_TOKEN when it is set, as CI does. A local caller without that variable falls back to the credential an authenticated GitHub CLI already holds, keeping verification authenticated and clear of the unauthenticated rate limit without this repository storing a token. With neither available the calls stay unauthenticated and may be rate limited; the reported API message names that cause.

For each formal version, verify both platforms separately (the Gitea API URL and RELEASE_TOKEN come from the caller's private environment):

python scripts/release.py verify vX.Y.Z
python scripts/release.py verify vX.Y.Z --platform gitea \
  --api-url "$GITEA_API_URL" --repository "$GITEA_REPOSITORY"

Each check reports tag commit, PyPI file identities and the selected Release ID. Git Finalizer's remote_verified describes branch publication only; report package/release verification separately.