# Best Practices

> Get the most out of Context7 with these best practices

## Add a Rule

To avoid typing `use context7` in every prompt, add a rule to your MCP client to automatically invoke Context7 for code-related questions:

- **Cursor**: `Cursor Settings > Rules`
- **Claude Code**: `CLAUDE.md`
- Or the equivalent in your MCP client

**Example rule:**

```txt
Always use Context7 MCP when I need library/API documentation, code generation, setup or configuration steps without me having to explicitly ask.
```

## Use Library ID

If you already know exactly which library you want to use, add its Context7 ID to your prompt. That way, Context7 MCP server can skip the library-matching step and directly continue with retrieving docs.

```txt
Implement basic authentication with Supabase. use library /supabase/supabase for API and docs.
```

The slash syntax tells the MCP tool exactly which library to load docs for.

## Specify a Version

To get documentation for a specific library version, just mention the version in your prompt:

```txt
How do I set up Next.js 14 middleware? use context7
```

Context7 will automatically match the appropriate version.

## Query Strategy

Context7 grounds your assistant with up-to-date docs, but the quality of what it retrieves depends on how the retrieval is scoped. These habits keep the retrieved context minimal and relevant:

- **Retrieve only when needed** — Context7 is for library, framework, SDK, API, and CLI-tool questions. Skip it for refactoring, writing scripts from scratch, debugging business logic, code review, or general programming concepts.
- **One concept per query** — scope each query to a single topic. Split multi-topic questions (e.g. "routing and auth and caching") into a separate query per concept, unless the question is about how the concepts interact. Combined queries dilute ranking and return shallow results for each topic.
- **Be specific, not vague** — a query like `"How to set up authentication with JWT in Express.js"` returns far better results than `"auth"` or `"hooks"`.
- **Keep the context relevant** — don't include sensitive or confidential information in queries, and use the best-matching library ID (and version-specific ID when a version matters) so you don't pull docs for the wrong package.