| name | context-window-management |
| description | Strategies for managing LLM context windows including |
| type | skill |
| created | 2026-02-27T00:00:00.000Z |
| domain | productivity |
| category | developer-experience |
| risk | unknown |
| source | vibeship-spawner-skills (Apache 2.0) |
| tags | ["skill","productivity","developer-experience","context","window","management"] |
Context Window Management
Strategies for managing LLM context windows including summarization, trimming, routing, and avoiding context rot
Capabilities
- context-engineering
- context-summarization
- context-trimming
- context-routing
- token-counting
- context-prioritization
Prerequisites
- Knowledge: LLM fundamentals, Tokenization basics, Prompt engineering
- Skills_recommended: prompt-engineering
Scope
- Does_not_cover: RAG implementation details, Model fine-tuning, Embedding models
- Boundaries: Focus is context optimization, Covers strategies not specific implementations
Ecosystem
Primary_tools
- tiktoken - OpenAI's tokenizer for counting tokens
- LangChain - Framework with context management utilities
- Claude API - 200K+ context with caching support
Patterns
Tiered Context Strategy
Different strategies based on context size
When to use: Building any multi-turn conversation system
interface ContextTier {
maxTokens: number;
strategy: 'full' | 'summarize' | 'rag';
model: string;
}
const TIERS: ContextTier[] = [
{ maxTokens: 8000, strategy: 'full', model: 'claude-3-haiku' },
{ maxTokens: 32000, strategy: 'full', model: 'claude-3-5-sonnet' },
{ maxTokens: 100000, strategy: 'summarize', model: 'claude-3-5-sonnet' },
{ maxTokens: Infinity, strategy: 'rag', model: 'claude-3-5-sonnet' }
];
async function selectStrategy(messages: Message[]): ContextTier {
const tokens = await countTokens(messages);
for (const tier of TIERS) {
if (tokens <= tier.maxTokens) {
return tier;
}
}
return TIERS[TIERS.length - 1];
}
async function prepareContext(messages: Message[]): PreparedContext {
const tier = await selectStrategy(messages);
switch (tier.strategy) {
case 'full':
return { messages, model: tier.model };
case 'summarize':
const summary = await summarizeOldMessages(messages);
return { messages: [summary, ...recentMessages(messages)], model: tier.model };
case 'rag':
const relevant = await retrieveRelevant(messages);
return { messages: [...relevant, ...recentMessages(messages)], model: tier.model };
}
}
Serial Position Optimization
Place important content at start and end
When to use: Constructing prompts with significant context
// LLMs weight beginning and end more heavily
// Structure prompts to leverage this