I cannot believe all these months and years people have been loading all of the tool JSON schemas upfront. This is such a waste of context window and something that was already solved three years ago.
There is no one “right” pattern. But yes it all generalizes to context engineering.
With plans for example, you write out potential distractions for later, to keep (the AI and the Human context) focused on a task at hand.
That pattern solves a distinctly different use case than the skills folder, but plans can also refer to skills in specific ways.
Context engineering is evolving with overlapping complementary patterns, and while certain vendors are branding patterns, i think we will hopefully we see tools converge.