Context Model

Defines what a Context record and a Context Map relationship contain. Does not define how boundaries are chosen — that is a human Adjudication informed by agents/boundary-proposer.md's proposals, never this skill's call (Constitution C9, DR2).

Schemas

schemas/context.schema.json (model/contexts.json, one array item per Context) and schemas/context-map.schema.json (model/context-map.json, one array item per relationship between two Contexts).

Required fields — Context

id (CTX-NNNN), name, aggregate_roots (≥1 — a Context with no aggregate root is not yet a modeled context, it is a grouping heuristic that hasn't earned the name), state, evidence. aggregate_roots at this stage are candidate names only, named per knowledge/ddd-reference.md §2 (Vernon's rules — an aggregate exists to enforce an invariant; if nobody can name the rule it enforces, it is not yet a real candidate). Full invariants are not modeled until Tactical Design (Stage 5, skills/tactical-model/).

Required fields — Context Map relationship

context_a, context_b, pattern (one of the eight standard DDD relationship patterns — knowledge/ddd-reference.md §1.3), evidence. Every pair of Contexts that communicate needs exactly one named pattern; leaving it unnamed is how integration debt accumulates. For a heritage system, the default is anticorruption-layer — never merge a legacy context into a new one "to clean it up."

Behavior-ID citation

A Context does not cite Behaviors directly. Behaviors cite their Context (behavior.context), and the Stage 2 gate requires every Behavior to map to exactly one Context (trace-lint.py --stage 2). A Context with zero Behaviors pointing to it is an orphan (scripts/graph-query.py orphans).

Content obligations

Populate subdomain_type (core/supporting/generic — knowledge/ddd-reference.md §1.1) so effort investment decisions are visible later. Populate ubiquitous_language as the model stabilizes — this is what makes the context legible to someone who has not sat in the room.

Unknowns

Where a boundary is genuinely undecided, the Context should not exist yet — record it as a candidate in the boundary-proposer's output, not as a half-committed Context record.

Minimal worked example

{ "id": "CTX-0001", "name": "Ordering", "subdomain_type": "core",
  "aggregate_roots": ["Order"], "state": "Approved",
  "evidence": [ { "source": "code", "locator": "orders/" } ] }

{ "context_a": "CTX-0001", "context_b": "CTX-0002", "pattern": "anticorruption-layer",
  "upstream": "CTX-0002", "rationale": "CTX-0002 is the legacy billing system; Ordering translates at the edge",
  "evidence": [ { "source": "code", "locator": "orders/billing_adapter.py:1" } ] }