The Context Window

Marking what the agent carries

Library › Context Problems

1. The Context Window

2. Window Occupancy

3. Growth per Turn

4. Remaining Space

5. Turn Budget

6. Retrieval Footprint

7. Retrieval per Turn

8. Search Rounds

9. Window Sizing

10. Truncation

11. Compaction

12. The Compaction Bill

13. Compacted Retrieval

14. The Compaction Threshold

15. Verbatim Tail

16. Stateless API

17. Retrieval Cost

18. Context Tax

19. Quadratic Cost

20. Cost Forecast

The context window is a hard ceiling; the model cannot see past it, and everything the agent carries has to fit inside. Drawn as cells, the window stops being a number and becomes a space you can fill: divide the tokens by the cell size to get the count, then mark them off. What is left over is the room the conversation still has, and the rest of the chapter is about spending it.

⬇ The Context Window worksheet (1 page)

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2. Window Occupancy