# Context Inheritance Context inheritance is the mechanism by which child context layers receive and extend context from parent layers. In the [[Context Layering]] architecture, enterprise context flows down to teams, team context flows down to individuals, and individual context flows down to tasks. ## How it works Like class inheritance in object-oriented programming: - **Child inherits parent**: a team automatically gets enterprise-wide rules without explicitly copying them - **Child can override**: a team can set stricter coding standards than the enterprise default - **Child can extend**: a team adds project-specific context that the enterprise layer doesn't know about - **Overrides are local**: a team override doesn't change the enterprise rule for other teams ## Inheritance in practice In [[Claude Code]], this is already implemented: - **Enterprise** → organization settings propagate to all projects - **Project** → CLAUDE.md rules apply to all team members working in the repo - **User** → personal settings and memory layer on top - **Session** → conversation-specific context overrides everything for the current task ## Design considerations - **Explicit over implicit**: it should be clear which layer a piece of context comes from. Silent inheritance creates [[Context Confusion]] when you can't tell why the model behaves a certain way - **Override visibility**: when a child overrides a parent, the override should be visible and auditable - **Conflict resolution**: clear precedence rules prevent [[Context Confusion]] when layers disagree (narrower scope wins) - **Budget impact**: inherited context consumes [[Context Budget]] in the child layer. Heavy enterprise context leaves less room for team and personal context ## References - ## Related - [[Context Layering]] - [[Context Isolation]] - [[Personal Context Management (PCM)]] - [[Team Context Management (TCM)]] - [[Enterprise Context Management (ECM)]] - [[Context Engineering]] - [[Context Confusion]] - [[Context Budget]] - [[Context-as-Code]] - [[Claude Code]] - [[Separation of Concerns]]