Airsc is free for everyone. If it helps you, support it with $2–$20.

Support
PluginSafeAgent workflow & memorySome setup

PRD-driven-context-engineering

mattgierhart · mattgierhart/PRD-driven-context-engineering

Provides a methodology and skills to build products with AI agents that remember, by turning documentation into a navigable knowledge graph.

PRD-Led Context Engineering — Memory as Infrastructure. An ontology layer for product teams building products that solve real problems — with AI agents that remember. Gated PRD, typed IDs, markdown knowledge graph, Claude Code skills & hooks.

179 stars11License: MITUpdated 2 months ago0 opens

Preview

▍

What you can do with it

  • Ensure your AI agent retains project context across multiple sessions for consistent development.
  • Collaborate with AI agents using a shared knowledge graph derived from product requirements documents.
  • Develop complex features where agents need to reference previous design decisions and product history.

Safety check

Safe

No risky patterns found in the files we scanned.

Automated scan of the repo files. Always review code you run.

From the README

PRD-Led Context Engineering

Memory as Infrastructure — an operating system for building products with AI agents

Your AI partner is brilliant in one session and amnesiac by the next. This repository is the fix: a fork-ready methodology that turns documentation into a knowledge graph humans and AI navigate together — so the 50th session is smarter than the 1st.

Quick Start · The Idea · The Lifecycle · The Skills · Live Demo Views

⭐ If this changes how you build with AI, star the repo — stars put this method in front of the next team drowning in context drift.


The Problem: AI forgets. Teams drift.

Every era of software solved memory its own way — and broke it its own way:

  • Waterfall had Static Memory. Write everything down upfront: certainty, at the cost of change.
  • Agile moved fast and created Fragmented Memory. Knowledge scattered across tickets, wikis, and chats; shared understanding evaporated.
  • AI-assisted building adds a third failure: Amnesiac Memory. The model that architected your system yesterday has never heard of it today.

The common mistake is treating these as tooling problems. They are memory problems.

PRD-Led Context Engineering builds Shared Memory: it treats AI as a team member, not a tool, and keeps documentation synchronized with code so humans and AI navigate the same truth.


The Idea: Memory as Infrastructure

This methodology comes from two converging experiences.

Leading human teams — alignment always followed the same pattern: rally around a single Source-of-Truth artifact and the team moves as one. Without it, even great talent drifts.

Partnering with AI — sometimes the model performs at a senior level, sometimes it hallucinates. The variable was never the model's intelligence. It was the Context Density provided: rich, structured context in; senior-level output out.

The convergence: documentation is not an afterthought. Documentation is the infrastructure of shared memory.

The Golden Rule: If it isn't part of the memory infrastructure, it isn't true.

So every durable decision gets a Unique ID (UJ-101, BR-004, API-045) in a Source-of-Truth file. That ID is a memory node with weight: when the AI references BR-004, it isn't guessing — it's retrieving a specific, validated decision you encoded. The linked network of IDs across files is the Knowledge Graph, and it lives in plain markdown, in your repo, under version control.

The 4 Pillars

  1. Just-in-Time Context — IDs let you load only what a task needs. No repo-dumps, no noise, fewer hallucinations.
  2. The Documentation Ecosystem — PRD ↔ EPICs ↔ SoT connected by links, skills, and hooks. When logic changes, both human and AI know.
  3. Context Validation — context is measured like code. Too sparse, the AI drifts; too dense, it chokes. The repo scores itself (see Readiness Scoring).
  4. Progressive Documentation — update in place, never copy. No PRD_v2.md, ever. One document, many versions, single current reality.

The Cognitive Shift

This changes how work is measured, not just how it's tooled:

Traditional AgilePRD-Led Context EngineeringThe Shift
SprintsContext WindowsWe don't time-box based on dates; we scope-box based on cognitive capacity.
User StoriesPromptsWe don't write descriptions; we engineer prompts that deterministically load context.
Tribal KnowledgeSource of TruthIf it isn't in the Knowledge Graph (SoT/), it doesn't exist.
StandupsDocumentation HooksNo status meetings. Event-driven hooks handle context loading, gate checks, and memory handoffs.
Project ManagementContext GovernanceWe don't task-manage people. The system gates execution until context is verified valid.

What's in the box

Everything below ships in this repo, works offline, and forks in one click:

FeatureWhat it gives you
🧠 The Knowledge Graph14 SoT files, 21 ID types, zero databases — durable memory in markdown
📈 The Progressive PRDA gated v0.1 → v1.0 lifecycle that stops AI from one-shotting your architecture
🛠 47 SkillsStage playbooks from problem framing to crossing the chasm — Dunford, Hormozi, Moore, Torres built in
📊 Readiness ScoringThe repo computes whether you're ready to advance — and what to fix first
🫀 The Development Graph@implements tags bridge code to specs; drift surfaces as a verdict, not a surprise
📰 The Human Review LayerEvery SoT file rendered as a styled, hyperlinked page its reviewer actually wants to read
🤖 The Agent SquadFour role agents with persistent memory, coordinated through files instead of meetings

🧠 Feature: A Knowledge Graph in plain markdown

The pitch: long-term product

View source on GitHub