# Requests started failing after we enriched context attributes with a big object

Asked by Leandro Paes on 2024-12-04. Tags: errors, http-api, attributes.

We run a marketplace and started passing our product object as context attributes
so audiences could target by category, seller, price range, etc. Worked at first.
After the catalog team added more fields to the product payload, requests began
getting rejected.

I removed fields one by one until it worked again, so clearly there is a size or
entry limit somewhere, but I could not find the actual numbers. What are the real
payload limits for context attributes? Trial and error is not how I want to
document this for the team

## 1 answer

### Accepted answer from Renata Okonkwo (2024-12-05)

The limits you were reverse-engineering: context attributes accept at most 30
entries, nested at most 5 levels deep. Your growing product object crossed the
entry cap once the catalog team expanded it.

The design intent is worth internalizing here: attributes are not a payload
channel, they are evaluation inputs. The only fields worth sending are the ones
your audience conditions actually reference. A CQL condition like

```cql
context's category is "electronics" and context's price is less than 500
```

needs two attributes, not the forty-field product document. So instead of
serializing the domain object, map it down:

```js
croct.fetch('product-hero@1', {
    attributes: {
        category: product.category,
        seller: product.seller.type,
        price: product.price,
    },
});
```

One related distinction so you do not hit the neighboring wall: `eventMetadata`
is a separate mechanism with its own cap of 5 entries. Neither is meant to
carry full domain objects, and both stay comfortably under their limits once
you send only what audiences query.