Methods and systems for rule-based context acquisition are disclosed herein. The method includes accepting a request for target context from an application at a context acquisition system and identifying context rules relating to the target context using a rule-based inference cache. The method also includes determining an inferred value of the target context based on previously-acquired contexts and the context rules. If the inferred value of the target context cannot be determined, the method further includes executing a first step of a sensing plan for acquiring an inferred value of the target context using a rule-based acquisition planner, as well as executing any of a number of subsequent steps of the sensing plan until the inferred value of the target context is obtained.