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AI Council and Augment Context Engine

Augment gives agents a semantic code index through MCP. AI Council adds the team's decisions and rules on top of the code and delivers them to the agent itself.

In short

Augment Code has made its Context Engine available as a standalone MCP server that any agent can use. It builds a semantic index of the codebase and answers the agent's questions about the code. There's a local mode and a remote mode, where default branches are indexed through a GitHub App. In Augment's own test on 300 Elasticsearch pull requests, quality improved by more than 70%.

AI Council solves a neighboring problem. Besides the code, it stores what the code doesn't say: decisions, reasons, team rules. And it doesn't wait for the agent to ask. Rules and knowledge arrive through hooks when the agent opens or changes a file.

Point by point

Augment Context EngineAI Council
What the agent getsSemantic search and code contextCode graph, decisions with reasons, rules, ticket breakdowns
Who starts itThe agent calls an MCP toolHooks deliver on their own; MCP on request; the KB gate keeps the agent from editing blind
Team rulesNot the focusMUST and SHOULD tied to code, plus checks in branch review
BranchesRemote mode indexes default branchesKnowledge on any git branch, moves to the target after merge
FreshnessCode re-indexingCode re-indexing plus re-checks of knowledge entries, with labels
DeploymentAugment cloud or local modeCloud or self-hosted; air-gapped on Enterprise

Which to choose

  • When Augment Context Engine is enoughWhat your agent lacks most is search across a large codebase, and you track team decisions and rules some other way.
  • When you need AI CouncilYou want the agent to get the team's decisions and rules along with the code, delivered automatically rather than only when it asks. You work with parallel branches or need an air-gapped setup.
  • Can you use bothYes, both connect to the agent over MCP. But two code-context sources for one agent are usually more than you need, so pick a primary one.

Augment Context Engine details are based on the vendor's public documentation and website as of October 2026: Context Engine MCP announcement. If anything has changed, let us know and we will correct it.

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