context-budget

name	context-budget
description	Keep the agent's context lean so accuracy doesn't collapse. Use on long sessions, big files, or when the agent starts hallucinating.
when_to_use	long session, huge file dump, agent forgetting earlier steps, accuracy dropping

Context Budget

More context is not better. Past a threshold, accuracy falls off a cliff (context rot).

• Don't dump whole files — read the relevant function/section, not the 2000-line module.
• Summarize, don't accumulate — replace a 200K-token transcript with a 4K recap of the load-bearing facts.
• Drop dead context — once a sub-task is done, its detail leaves the window. Keep the decision, drop the trace.
• State on disk, not in context — progress goes to a file the next turn re-reads, not into an ever-growing prompt. A bloated standing context (CLAUDE.md) taxes every single turn. Trim weekly. If the agent is confidently wrong, suspect the context before the model.