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.
- 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.