A 'context' is a collection of values that can be accessed by functions. Contexts come in five flavors: (this is still somewhat preliminary).

• persistent context
• lives forever
• not nested
• shared by all executions of the program
• accessed by /<name> (root relative) or %<name> (cwd relative)
• global context
• lives throughout the execution of the program
• may be nested
• use of overridden values determined statically based on the placement of the function body
• shared by all executions of the function body
• accessed by $<field_name>
• class context
• pointed to by 'self' object for member functions
• may be nested through inheritance.
• use of overridden values determined dynamically based on the class inheriting the function body
• shared by all executions of member functions for all objects instantiated from this class
• accessed by self.<field_name>
• object context ('self' object for member functions)
• 'self' object for member functions
• not nested
• shared by all executions of member functions for this object
• accessed by self.<field_name>
• function context (which can be nested arbitrarily deeply)
• temporary values for one execution of a function
• may be nested (nested functions)
• use of overridden values determined statically based on the placement of the function body
• shared by all nested functions
• accessed by <field_name>