How I think about the place we store and surface context as a "Plane" in the architecture not a "Layer".

“Context” of this post

I often find writing helps me coalesce and refine my thoughts when new patterns start to emerge, but aren’t very clear yet.

So this article is a brain dump / train of thought continuation of the architecture needed to have one Context Plane to rule them all, as part of a proposed “AI Data Stack”.

This article provides an overview of how I think the place we store context should be the equivalent of a ‘Control Plane’ and not a ‘Semantic BI Layer’ as part of a new “AI Data Stack”.

Plane not Layer

As I have been iterating and experimenting with my ideas and language for the “Context Plane” I initially started talking about the “Context Layer”.

New Semantic BI Layers for Old

But I found that as soon as I mentioned the term “layer” people from the data domain (and others from other domains) immediately thought like this:

Effectively the Context Layer was seen as the equivalent of a Semantic BI Layer of old. Something that provides Context of the data in the Centralised (or federated) Data Platform to the Last Mile, AI tools and AI Agents.

But to get to the data in the source systems it infers the AI Agents have to traverse through the Data Platform, which is not the pattern I envisage.

How I currently think of “Planes”

Here is a simplified version of the AgileData App and AgileData Platform architecture diagram for how we leverage the Google Cloud Platform infrastructure.

As you can see I tend to think of Control Planes as being horizontal rather than vertical objects on my diagrams.

The “Context Plane”

So my current thinking is the diagram should look something like this:

The “Context Plane” should provide the context for everything in the organisation that stores data. And it should allow AI Agents and GenAI tools.

The “Context Plane” should also be the thing a system or a set of tools/technologies accesses to communicate with another system or set of tools/technologies.

To be accurate I should I should have put the orange Context box between each of the Source Systems and Data Collection boxes but I didn’t want to complicate the diagram.

Wood from the Trees

Still a way to go before I have a coherent set of Patterns that I can Coach / Mentor / Teach somebody else for the “Context Plane”, and the “AI Data Stack” or present as a robust Architecture map.

But as I have already said, writing my half formed ideas helps me think.

An incoherent stream of Context

You can find all the previous articles with my train of thought listed in this thread:

https://agiledata.substack.com/t/context-plane

We are building the Context Plane while flying it, so always looking for early adopters to help us decide the final destination.

If you want a virtual chat grab a slot here:

https://contextplane.ai/contact-us/#bookemdanno

Agile Data N’ Info

"Context Plane" not Context Layer