principle-guard-the-context-window

Guard the Context Window

The context window is finite and non-renewable within a session. Every token should be worth its cost.

Why: Context overflow degrades reasoning quality, creates compression artifacts, and halts progress.

Pattern:

Isolate large payloads. Route verbose outputs, screenshots, and large documents to subagents. The main context gets summaries, not raw data.
Don't read what you won't use. Read selectively based on relevance. If a file isn't needed for the current task, skip it.
Keep frequently used content inline. Templates and references used on every invocation belong in the skill file, not in separate files that cost a read each time.
Size phases and cap scope. Limit files per phase, set turn budgets, account for mechanism costs.

The context window is finite and non-renewable within a session. Every token should be worth its cost.

Why: Context overflow degrades reasoning quality, creates compression artifacts, and halts progress.

Pattern:

Isolate large payloads. Route verbose outputs, screenshots, and large documents to subagents. The main context gets summaries, not raw data.
Don't read what you won't use. Read selectively based on relevance. If a file isn't needed for the current task, skip it.
Keep frequently used content inline. Templates and references used on every invocation belong in the skill file, not in separate files that cost a read each time.
Size phases and cap scope. Limit files per phase, set turn budgets, account for mechanism costs.