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

Abstract

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 contract while holding the tool surface, retrieval instruction, table allow-list and operation rules byte-for-byte fixed. Compiling the contract's own SQL expressions into views gives the ceiling a pre-computed layer would reach: gold on all 176 tasks it covers. Content dominates. It raises hard-task accuracy from 13.9% to 55.1%, 22.6% to 56.6%, 22.9% to 68.4% and 37.0% to 77.4%, beating the same knowledge pasted into the prompt on every model. Scaffolding without content is worth 0 to 5 points on two flash models and 14 to 15 on two frontier models. Against the compiled ceiling the contract arm's shortfall is a failure to derive, and it falls from 39 points to 5 with model capability. The contract beats the prompt because the rule it needs is one lookup away rather than buried in a long prompt: its SQL carries the fee semantics up to 98% of the time against the prompt arm's 4%, and at the lowest cost per correct answer on three of four models. For practitioners: semantics first, scaffolding second, pre-computed macros only where an agent demonstrably fails to derive. Ungoverned arms submitted 166 mutating statements; governed arms none. The gain is confined to the contract's domain. On one model the benchmark's own withheld golds grade the contract arm at 51.9% against 18.8% for the prompt baseline.