# script: context-load

**Location:** `scripts/context-load`
**Symlinked to:** `~/sbin/context-load`

## Purpose

Gathers project context for a Claude Code session by walking from cwd upward, collecting key index files, and outputting structured text suitable for `--append-system-prompt`.

## What it loads (in order)

1. Every `CLAUDE.md` found walking up from cwd (top-down order) + directory tree (depth 3) from each
2. Every `CONTEXT.md` found walking up (top-down)
3. Every `MEMORY.md` found walking up (top-down)
4. Every `BESTPRACTICES.md` found walking up (top-down)
5. All `*.md` files in cwd (deduped against already-emitted files)
6. `git-status-report` output from the highest-level CLAUDE.md directory

## How it works

- Uses `discover_upward()` to walk from `$PWD` to `/`, collecting directories
- Resolves symlinks via `readlink -f` to deduplicate (e.g., `~/dev/claude/CLAUDE.md` symlink to `claude-foundations/CLAUDE.md`)
- Emits each file with a structured header (`=== FILE: ... ===`) for easy parsing
- Tree output uses `tree` with fallback to `find`
- ANSI codes are stripped from git-status-report output

## Gotchas

- Only walks **upward** from cwd — does not descend into subdirectories. Launch from within a project directory to get that project's context.
- Index files (MEMORY.md, CONTEXT.md, BESTPRACTICES.md) should be thin indexes, not large documents, since they're injected into the system prompt.