Short answer
In AI tools, context is everything the assistant can see when it answers: your prompt, pasted text, uploaded files, saved instructions and connected sources. It does not know your prices, policies or customers unless they are in that context. The most useful habit is a one-page context pack covering who you are, who the reader is, current facts and policies, your voice, good examples and firm boundaries.
- The assistant answers from its training plus whatever is in the conversation, nothing else.
- A one-page context pack beats pasting a whole manual.
- Stale context is worse than none: it produces confident, outdated answers.
- Leave out personal information and superseded documents.
When an assistant gets your prices, policies or tone wrong, the cause is usually missing context, not a weak model. Written for customer service staff, office managers and owners who already prompt reasonably well, this lesson has you build one reusable context pack for a weekly task and prove that it cuts invented facts. You need 25 minutes, any major AI assistant, and the policies or price list your task depends on.
What context means in AI tools
Context is everything the assistant can see when it answers: your prompt, the conversation so far, pasted text, uploaded files, saved instructions and anything pulled from connected apps. Beyond that, it has only patterns from training, which do not include your prices, your cancellation policy or how you speak to customers.
When a fact is missing, the assistant rarely stops. It fills the gap with something plausible. That is why the same tool can be excellent for one person and useless for another: one gave it the facts, the other made it guess.
Most tools now offer ways to keep context between chats, such as saved instructions, project spaces with files, or memory. Names and limits vary by tool and plan and change often, so check your own tool’s settings. MBIE’s quickstart for businesses reminds owners that AI tools may retain information you provide (MBIE), which matters for what you put in.
What goes in a context pack
A context pack is the one-page brief a capable temp would need on day one. Six headings cover most tasks:
- Who we are
- Business, location, size, what you sell. Two or three sentences.
- Who the reader is
- Customer type, what they usually want, what they worry about.
- Facts and policies
- Prices, times, inclusions, cancellation rules. Current versions only, with the date you checked them.
- Voice
- Three words for your tone, plus phrases you use and phrases you never use.
- Examples
- One or two past replies you were proud of.
- Boundaries
- What the assistant must not do, such as promise refunds outside policy or give safety advice.
Leave out customer personal information, superseded documents, internal debates and anything included “just in case”. Every extra paragraph is another chance for the assistant to pick up the wrong detail.
Exercise: build a context pack
- Pick a fact-heavy task. Choose something where answers depend on your own details: booking enquiries, product questions, quote explanations, return requests.
- Run it without context. Take a real example with names removed and ask the assistant to reply. Save the output and highlight every fact it invented.
- Write the pack. Use the six headings. Keep it under 400 words. Date the facts section.
- Run it again with the pack. Paste the pack above the same request in a new chat, or save it as project instructions if your tool supports that.
- Count invented facts in both. The second count should be at or near zero. If it is not, the missing fact belongs in the pack.
- Give the pack an owner. Store it in a shared document with a review date. When a price or policy changes, the pack changes the same day.
Worked example: a Nelson kayak operator’s enquiry replies
Illustrative example: a four-person sea kayak tour operator near Nelson answers 20 to 30 booking enquiries a week in summer. Without context, an assistant replying to a family enquiry said children of all ages were welcome, lunch was included and refunds were “always available”. None of that matched the operator’s terms. The owner wrote this pack (prices and policies are illustrative):
CONTEXT PACK: booking enquiries (facts checked 19 October 2026)
Who we are: small guided sea kayak operator based near Nelson. Four staff. Half-day
and full-day guided tours along the coast, October to April.
Who the reader is: mostly families and couples on holiday, often first-time paddlers,
usually writing from their phone. Main worries: safety, weather, children's ages.
Facts and policies:
- Half-day guided tour: $145 adult, $110 child (8 to 14). Minimum age 8.
- Under-8s: we suggest our family water taxi and short walk trip instead.
- Snacks and water included. Lunch NOT included on the half-day tour.
- Weather call made by 7pm the night before. If we cancel, full refund or rebook.
- If the customer cancels more than 48 hours ahead: full refund. Within 48 hours: 50%.
Voice: warm, practical, brief. Use "kia ora" to open. Never say "adventure of a lifetime".
Boundaries: do not confirm a booking or availability; say we will confirm by email.
Do not give medical or swimming-ability advice; ask them to call us.
Then the request: Using the context pack, reply to this enquiry: “We’re a family of four, kids aged 7 and 11, visiting in early January. Can we all do the half-day tour? What happens if it’s windy? Is lunch included?”
Example output (illustrative and abridged):
Kia ora, and thanks for getting in touch.
Our half-day tour has a minimum age of 8, so your 7-year-old can't join this one.
For families with younger children we suggest our water taxi and short walk trip.
On wind: we make the weather call by 7pm the night before. If we cancel, you can
have a full refund or rebook. Snacks and water are included, but lunch isn't.
We'll confirm availability for early January by email.
Every fact traces to the pack. The owner checks the dates and sends it.
Where context goes wrong
- Too much. A 40-page operations manual pasted in produces answers that blend old and new rules. Extract what the task needs.
- Stale facts. An out-of-date price list is worse than none, because the answer is confident and wrong. Date the pack and review it.
- Conflicting sources. If two documents disagree, the assistant may pick either. Resolve the conflict in the pack.
- Personal information in packs. Customer histories and staff details do not belong in a reusable pack. See protecting customer information when using AI.
- Untrusted text treated as instructions. Customer emails pasted as context can contain instructions the assistant follows. The NCSC’s joint guidance for small businesses lists this prompt injection risk alongside hallucinations (NCSC).
When the facts outgrow a page, for example hundreds of policies or product specifications, the answer is retrieval rather than a longer pack. Our lesson on understanding retrieval augmented generation and the comparison of RAG versus long context explain the step up. For tourism and hospitality businesses, the reservation enquiry handling workflow shows the same idea at scale. Tool guides for Claude and Gemini Notebook, formerly NotebookLM, cover where each keeps saved context.
Check your work
- I ran the same task with and without context and counted invented facts in each.
- My context pack fits on one page and uses the six headings.
- The facts section is dated and contains current versions only.
- The pack contains no customer or staff personal information.
- The pack has an owner and a review date.
- I know whether my AI tool remembers context between chats, and I checked that setting.
Next lesson: Building a reusable prompt library shows how to store context packs and prompts so the whole team uses the same tested versions.
Sources
- Quickstart: Businesses using AI tools, Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, accessed 19 October 2026
- Artificial intelligence for small business, ASD’s ACSC with NCSC New Zealand and COSBOA, 2025
Written by the Levy Street team in Wellington. Last updated 19 October 2026.