Context Personas

LeanCTX ships tuned for software work: the full Power tool surface, a code-oriented intent taxonomy, identity compression. A persona reshapes that whole context surface for a different domain (prospecting, research, support, data) in one switch, and leaves the coding default untouched.

Built-in personas

Each persona is a real, shipped bundle. The tool surface, read mode, compressor, chunker, intent taxonomy and sensitivity floor all move together:

Persona	Tool surface	Read mode	Compressor · chunker	Sensitivity floor
coding (default)	Power profile — full surface	auto	identity · lines	public
research	Standard profile	map	markdown · paragraph	public
support	Standard profile	auto	prose · paragraph	internal
data-analysis	Standard profile	map	identity · lines	internal
lead-gen (alias sales)	Custom 6-tool surface	map	prose · paragraph	confidential

The lead-gen surface is genuinely narrowed to six prospecting tools (the refactor/code tools are gone):

ctx_read · ctx_search · ctx_url_read · ctx_knowledge · ctx_semantic_search · ctx_session

Selecting a persona

Set it via environment variable (or config.persona):

export LEAN_CTX_PERSONA=lead-gen     # or: research · support · data-analysis · coding

Persona::resolve reads LEAN_CTX_PERSONA › config.persona › default coding. An unknown name falls back to coding, never an error. An explicit tool profile (set with lean-ctx tools) always wins, so existing coding installs are never disturbed.

Ship your own vertical — no fork

Not one of the built-ins? Drop a declarative persona file in your personas directory (default <OS-config-dir>/lean-ctx/personas, override with LEAN_CTX_PERSONAS_DIR) and select it by name:

# <personas_dir>/compliance.toml
name = "compliance"
tool_profile = "custom"
tools = ["ctx_read", "ctx_search", "ctx_semantic_search", "ctx_knowledge"]
default_read_mode = "map"
compressor = "prose"
chunker = "paragraph"
intent_taxonomy = ["scan", "flag", "cite", "report"]
sensitivity_floor = "confidential"

export LEAN_CTX_PERSONA=compliance

Under the hood runtime-wired since v3.9.2

Persona resolution lives in rust/src/core/persona.rs. Since v3.9.2, every field is wired into the runtime — none of this is a prompt hint:

• Tool surface — the resolved profile drives list_tools, so the advertised tool set genuinely shrinks or grows per persona. An explicit profile (lean-ctx tools) still wins.
• Read mode — ctx_read resolves its mode as: explicit mode argument > policy pack > persona > profile default. auto means the persona has no opinion.
• Compressor & chunker — ctx_url_read runs flowing-text modes (auto/markdown/text/transcript) through the persona compressor, and token-budget cuts land on the persona chunker's boundaries (paragraphs, line windows) instead of mid-sentence. Extractive modes (facts/quotes/links) stay verbatim to protect citations.
• Intent taxonomy — non-coding personas append a PERSONA/INTENTS/DEFAULTS block to the MCP session instructions, so the agent speaks the domain's vocabulary. The coding default leaves the prompt byte-identical to a persona-less install.
• Sensitivity floor — folded into [sensitivity] enforcement: a floor above public switches enforcement on and can only tighten the configured floor, never loosen it. Same governance layer as roles and budgets.

The active persona is reported at GET /v1/capabilities under server.persona, so orchestrators can branch on it instead of guessing.

Where to go next

• Configuration — the LEAN_CTX_PERSONA and LEAN_CTX_PERSONAS_DIR reference.
• Context Personas journey — the end-to-end story.
• Security & Governance — roles, scopes and the sensitivity floor.