The 7 context levels

Dark context
Gray context
Green context
LEVEL 1: TACIT CONTEXT
TYPE: Dark context
ArticulatedRecordedFindableUpdatedConnectedAutomated

Description. Unarticulated and tacit. People act on it but cannot put it into words, so it is never written and leaves no trace.

Example. Grandfather reads the farm with his boots. He knows the low field by the river floods if the rain comes early, that the top paddock dries first, that the soil is ready when it crumbles a certain way in his hand. Ask him how and he shrugs. Forty years on the same ground put it in his legs, not on paper.

Explore the different levels ↓
01
LEVEL 1: Tacit context
TYPE: Dark context
ArticulatedRecordedFindableUpdatedConnectedAutomated

Description. Unarticulated and tacit. People act on it but cannot put it into words, so it is never written and leaves no trace.

Example. Grandfather reads the farm with his boots. He knows the low field by the river floods if the rain comes early, that the top paddock dries first, that the soil is ready when it crumbles a certain way in his hand. Ask him how and he shrugs. Forty years on the same ground put it in his legs, not on paper.

Cost.It walks out the door the day they leave.

↓say it out loud
02
LEVEL 2: Articulated context
TYPE: Dark context
ArticulatedRecordedFindableUpdatedConnectedAutomated

Description. It could be said, but it never gets written. It lives in one head and walks out the door with them.

Example. One spring he walks the land with his granddaughter and tells her all of it: sow the top paddock first, never trust the low field before May, watch the old oak for the first frost. She remembers most of it. None of it is written down. She learns the farm by walking beside him, or it is not learned.

Cost.Said once, then it fades; the next person starts from zero.

↓write it down
03
LEVEL 3: Recorded context
TYPE: Gray context
ArticulatedRecordedFindableUpdatedConnectedAutomated

Description. Written down once, then buried. So hidden it is almost as good as dark.

Example. He filled a notebook once, years ago: sowing dates, fields, what the weather did. It sits in a kitchen drawer under the seed catalogues, the ink fading. The farm's whole memory is technically in there, found by no one, and each season the family works from what they can still remember.

Cost.It gets rebuilt from memory every season.

↓put it where people look
04
LEVEL 4: Findable context
TYPE: Gray context
ArticulatedRecordedFindableUpdatedConnectedAutomated

Description. Recorded and findable, but drifting out of date. Half still holds, and you cannot tell which half.

Example. Someone types it into a binder on the shelf, easy to find at last. But it still lists the co-op that closed and the drainage from before they re-dug the ditch. A new farmhand follows it and floods a field that drains itself now. Half of it holds, and no one can tell which half.

Cost.People follow it and get it confidently wrong.

↓give it an owner
05
LEVEL 5: Updated context
TYPE: Green context
ArticulatedRecordedFindableUpdatedConnectedAutomated

Description. Updated and correct, but stranded in a disconnected doc. You must know it exists and go find it.

Example. The granddaughter rewrites it properly: the fields as they drain today, the suppliers that still answer, this year's sowing windows. Correct and current, sitting in a file on her laptop called Farm Notes final. You only benefit from it if she remembers to send you the link.

Cost.Only the people who know it exists ever benefit.

↓connect it to your AI
06
LEVEL 6: Passively connected
TYPE: Green context
ArticulatedRecordedFindableUpdatedConnectedAutomated

Description. Now connected to your AI, which can reach the knowledge and answer from it. Reliable, but only when someone asks.

Example. Now the records feed an assistant the whole family can ask. When does the low field flood, what does the old oak say about frost, which supplier still answers: the reply comes straight from the live data, and it is right. But it only speaks when spoken to. Nothing moves until someone thinks to ask.

Cost.Nothing happens until someone thinks to ask.

↓let it act
07
LEVEL 7: Actively connected
TYPE: Green context
ArticulatedRecordedFindableUpdatedConnectedAutomated

Description. Wired into automations and workflows. The AI no longer waits to be asked, it acts on the knowledge itself.

Example. Now nothing waits for a question. The assistant watches the forecast, the soil, and the calendar, and acts: it warns the day before the low field would flood, reorders seed when the shed runs low, books the harvester the moment the window opens. The farm's knowledge runs in the background, the way it once lived only in grandfather's hands.

Payoff.None. The knowledge works on its own, even when no one asks.

The 7 context levels is a concept by Ola Möller and Andriy Zhukov
darkcontext: context levels

darkcontext:~$how much of your context is actually green?

A short call, not a sales pitch. Bring one process and we'll place its context on this map — how much is green, how much has gone gray, how much is still dark — and what it would take to move it up. And whether it's worth it.

book a call

darkcontext:~$not ready to talk?

Leave an email instead. No pitch, just the occasional note as we map where dark context shows up and what helps bring it to the surface.

>