Scope
Who or what is requesting context, and which notes or areas are in scope.
Bounded memory
Context leases
Not every agent needs the whole workspace.
The context problem
Notes are context, and context can change the answer an AI system gives. Too little context can make an answer generic. Too much context can violate boundaries or confuse the task.
The better question is not only "What can the tool read?" The better question is: "What context is allowed for this purpose?"
A visible boundary
A context lease is a future human-readable artifact that names the boundary of memory access before memory moves into a task, conversation, summary, or agent workflow.
What a lease could name
Rules
Traversal, freshness, exclusions, permissions, and duration.
Audit
What snapshot was materialized, how it was used, and what should be reviewable later.
Replayability and audit
If a lease can be read by a human and resolved by a tool, context selection becomes less magical. The user can inspect what was allowed, and the system can explain what was used.
Future status
Context leases are a design direction and prototype concept, not a mature public product. They point toward a more accountable way for AI tools to work with personal and relational memory.