Context packs

A context pack is a folder for one task: selected sources, a declared budget, cited excerpts, omissions, and a manifest that counts wrapper overhead. It is assembled by occam pack from existing tools (occam_transcode, occam_digest, occam_search). It is not a new MCP tool and not a second extractor.

These three packs were assembled from the golden workflow captures (2026-09-05, host toolchain ff-occam/1.0.0-rc.2). That is not a GitHub Release v1.0.0 certification.

Pack	Task	Outcome
Understand an instruction	MDN function scope / closures	Focus hit; 18 sections omitted and named
Compare sources	nginx proxy_pass vs proxy_read_timeout	Both pages ok; focus weak; timeout not invented
Inspect changes	Same MDN URL + stored hash	unchanged:true, empty body preserved

Each folder has manifest.json, sources.json, omissions.json, and excerpts.txt. Rebuild from the recorded payloads:

occam pack --task "…" --from-json docs/examples/context-packs/_inputs/understand-instruction.json --out tmp/pack --budget 800 --focus "function scope closures"

Live (spawns the local MCP host):

occam pack --task "Show how function scope and closures work" \
  --url https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Guide/Functions \
  --focus "function scope closures" --budget 800 \
  --out tmp/pack

--budget is a total for the written pack: excerpts.txt plus wrapper JSON (manifest / sources / omissions without the computed budget block). Wrapper cost is reserved first; the remainder is split across sources as max_tokens / per_url_max_tokens. If the assembled total still exceeds --budget, the pack is written, manifest.ok is false, and the command exits 1 — excerpts are not truncated to force the counter. If the wrapper alone cannot fit, Occam does not fetch.

If a source fails, the pack is still written and the failure stays in sources.json. Do not fill gaps from memory.

Gallery: Workflow gallery · named builds: Release evidence · feedback: what to send.