context

context

Returns a compact context bundle for a symbol -- its doc comment, class surface (signatures), the target's own body, and a capped list of callers -- instead of whole source files. Reach for it before editing or explaining a symbol so you read a fraction of the tokens a full-file read would cost.

Running it from the CLI

drag-lint context --task "verb qname" [--db <file.sqlite>] [--format md|json|raw] [--max-callers N] [--context N] [--no-docs]

--task "verb qname" names the symbol and intended action (e.g. "modify Foo.Bar"). --format selects md, json, or raw. --max-callers N caps how many callers are included. --context N is present in the usage line; its effect is not documented beyond the flag name. --no-docs omits doc comments from the bundle.

Reaching it in the IDE

No menu item calls this directly. The plugin uses it internally from DragLint.Plugin.Editor.pas:633; there is no menu item for it. The MCP get_context_bundle tool wraps this same engine.

What it needs

The --db flag is optional -- drag-lint auto-resolves the index when omitted. An index must still exist.

Example

Illustrative only:

drag-lint context --task "modify CustomerOrder.TCustomerOrder.Total" --db C:\Projects\MyApp\_D-RAG\MyApp.sqlite --format md

This would return Total's doc comment, its class's surface, its own body, and a capped list of callers, as markdown.

When the phrase is not an identifier

The bundle also carries a ## Wiki section: if the task phrase matches the name or an alias of a dl:wiki concept topic in this index, up to two topics are included, above the code, with their owning symbol, SeeCode participants and body. --no-docs suppresses it -- a concept body is prose, and --no-docs means no prose.

That also makes a failed lookup useful. --task "modify the streaming path" names no symbol, so the bundle reports NOT FOUND and exits 1 -- but if the phrase names a concept, the topic and its symbols are printed anyway, and that is the pointer the reader was actually asking for.

The NOT FOUND line and the non-zero exit are recent. Until 2026-08-27 a qname that resolved to nothing produced an empty bundle reading Token count (estimated): 0 and exit 0 -- indistinguishable from a symbol that genuinely has no context. The check meant to catch it tested whether the bundle carried a qname, which Build had already filled in from the request, so it never fired.

Topics are read from the SAME index the bundle came from. A concept note from an unrelated project would be a confidently wrong answer, so cross-database matching is deliberately not done.