Lesson 2: Context-Driven AI Assistance

Why Context Matters

AI editors work best with relevant context. Without architecture context:

• AI makes assumptions about your system
• AI doesn't know your constraints
• AI suggests generic patterns that may not fit

With architecture context:

• AI understands your system's structure
• AI knows which components are critical
• AI provides relevant suggestions

Building Architecture Context

Basic Context

# Build context for current repo
sruja context -r .

# Output context as JSON
sruja context -r . --format json

Cross-Repo Context

# Build context across multiple repos
sruja context -r repoA -r repoB -r repoC

# Useful for monorepos or microservices

Focus Mode

For specific tasks, use focus mode to get a task-scoped briefing:

# Get context focused on a specific file/component
sruja focus --file src/api/main.rs

# Get context for a specific component
sruja focus --component PaymentService

Focus output includes:

• Blast radius: What depends on this
• Decisions: Why this was designed this way
• Boundaries: What this component owns
• AI instructions: How to work with this component

Context Score

Measure how "AI-ready" your architecture is:

# Get AI-readiness score (0-100)
sruja context-score -r .

The score evaluates 5 dimensions:

Optimizing Context for AI

1. Add Descriptions

container PaymentService {
  description "Handles payment processing and fraud detection"
  // AI now understands what this does
}

2. Link Requirements

container PaymentService {
  requirement "Must comply with PCI-DSS"
  requirement "Must process 1000 TPS"
}

3. Add Intent

intent "Payment Goals" {
  outcome "All payments processed within 5 seconds"
}

4. Document Decisions

PaymentService = container "Payment Service" {
  description "Handles payments"

  adr "ADR-0012: Why we use Stripe instead of PayPal"
  adr "ADR-0015: Why payments are synchronous"
}

Daily Context Sync

For AI editors, run daily sync to keep context fresh:

# Quick sync
sruja sync -r .

# Full with drift check
sruja daily -r .

This updates:

• .sruja/context.json
• .cursorrules
• .copilot-instructions.md
• CLAUDE.md

Next Steps

Lesson 3 covers patterns for effective AI pair programming with architecture.