Context discipline
Context is the scarce resource. Everything you paste, every file the agent reads, and every tool result competes for the same window and the same budget.
Rules that pay off
- Point, do not paste. Give file paths and let the agent read what it needs. Pasted code rots silently while the file moves on.
- Compact before switching topics. End a debugging tangent with a one-line conclusion before starting new work; stale hypotheses mislead later steps.
- Retrieve shared knowledge instead of re-explaining. If your team has published conventions (for example on okfshare), cite the bundle rather than restating rules in chat.
- Prefer bounded retrieval. Search with a question, take the cited snippet, move on. Whole-file reads are for when you will actually edit the file.
- Log decisions where agents can find them. A decision that lives only in the transcript is lost to the next session.
The test
A well-run session can be summarized in five lines a teammate understands. If it cannot, the session accumulated context it never converted into durable knowledge.