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Which Part of the Context Layer Does the Work? Separating Semantic Content from Retrieval Scaffolding in Text-to-SQL Agents

arXiv · AI, language, vision and robotics · article · Sep 6, 2026 · UTC

Context layers, curated documentation that an analytics agent fetches at query time, produce large accuracy gains on text-to-SQL benchmarks. A with/without comparison cannot say which part of the layer does the work: the semantic content, the retrieval scaffolding that delivers it, or the pre-computed views that usually accompany it. We report a four-arm ablation on DABStep on four models that separates the three. The instrument is a data contract: a YAML artifact that carries a domain's semantics and the rules an agent's tools enforce. One arm empties every field of prose in the frozen contra

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