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A context is a named recommendation surface, such as a homepage feed, related articles rail, product detail page, checkout upsell, email digest, or video carousel. Contexts are how NeuronSearchLab separates the intent of one surface from another. A homepage can optimize for discovery, a product page can optimize for similarity, and a checkout surface can optimize for conversion without forcing every request through the same ranking setup.

Why contexts matter

A context gives operators one place to control the recommendation behavior for a surface:
  • which model family and retrieval algorithm should be preferred
  • which ranking recipe should shape candidate sources, signals, discovery, and guardrails
  • which pipeline stages should run for that surface
  • which hard pre-query filters should narrow the candidate pool
  • which rules should reshape already-scored results
  • which model is currently serving after fallback resolution
This is what turns NSL from a generic recommendation endpoint into a controllable ranking platform. Applications keep sending a stable context_id; operators can then tune the surface without changing application code every time.

How context control fits together

Where to go next