# 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. **Paths** to every `CLAUDE.md` found walking up from cwd (not contents — Claude Code loads those natively via `claudeMd`), annotated with `description:` from sibling `ABOUT.md` if present
2. **Paths** to every project `CLAUDE.md` found under each CLAUDE.md directory (depth 2-4) — for project discovery, also annotated with ABOUT.md descriptions
3. Every `CONTEXT.md` found walking up (top-down) — full contents
4. Every `MEMORY.md` found walking up (top-down) — full contents
5. Every `BESTPRACTICES.md` found walking up (top-down) — full contents

## What it does NOT load

- CLAUDE.md contents (loaded natively by Claude Code)
- Directory trees (Claude can run `tree` on demand for fresh results)
- README.md files (human-oriented, read on demand)
- git-status-report (moved to `/housekeeping` skill)

## 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
- Uses `find` to discover project CLAUDE.md files under each hierarchy directory

## Gotchas

- Only walks **upward** from cwd for index files — but scans **downward** for project CLAUDE.md discovery. 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.