Context bridge

What you'll build

Sprout's planning calls land in the right context: your agent walks in already knowing what's happening outside Sprout's surface. A worksheet from school. An upcoming family event. A photo of a drawing. Whatever data lives outside, your home agent reads it, summarizes it, and carries the gist into the Sprout conversation.

The artifact is a working summary your agent uses immediately when calling Sprout. The data flow is: outside source → your home agent → Sprout context.

Pieces you'll combine

• Your home agent: does most of the work. Reads the source, summarizes, holds the summary in conversation.
• Family overview via family.query_overview: the one Sprout call this pattern needs, to pin which kid the work is for.

Build it

Three movements:

1. Your agent reads the source (file, page, photo, transcript).
2. Your agent extracts what matters and summarizes.
3. Your agent calls family.query_overview to resolve the kid context. From here, downstream pattern calls have everything they need.

You: [drops a PDF or pastes a page] Read this and let's plan something
for tonight.
Your agent: [reads]
Got it. Summary: <topic, key points, vocabulary level>.
Want a 5-minute review activity for tonight?
You: Yes. Reading level matters: she handles common words but struggles
with multi-syllable. Keep it light.
Your agent: Logged. Pulling kid context from Sprout...

family.query_overview()
# Returns: { parents: [...], kids: [{ childId, name, age, ... }] }
# Your agent picks the right kid, holds the childId for downstream calls.

When to use it

• The next Sprout action depends on data Sprout can't see.
• You want planning to ground in what's actually happening (school, weather, family schedule).
• Anti-pattern: the source is already inside Sprout (a previous task's transcript, an Activity event). Just read it directly.

Tools touched

• family.query_overview: pulls the family roster. Used to resolve kid ids.

The rest of this pattern lives on your home agent's side. Sprout exposes no specific "context loading" tool; the agent is the bridge.

Recommended skills

Drop these into your library to compose with this pattern.

Roadmap

• Soon Direct upload to Sprout Systems. Hand a file (PDF, photo, audio) straight to Sprout via an asset endpoint instead of stashing it on your agent's side. Sprout holds the canonical copy; the summary is just a reference.
• Soon Use uploaded context in canvases and tasks. Reference an uploaded asset from a canvas (worksheet image rendered inside a review canvas) or from a conversational task's guidance (Sprout reads the asset to ground the chat). Closes the loop: context that came in via this pattern flows back out to the kid surfaces.

Seen in walkthroughs

Solar system learning loop Chore + photo proof

Related patterns

• Reports and briefs: the inverse direction. Outside → in (Context bridge) vs. in → parent (Reports and briefs).
• Reactive loop: also home-agent-side, but pushed by Sprout events instead of pulled in.