Search Rounds

Three searches, three unknown sizes

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

An agent that searches does not know in advance what it will get back. A query that finds nothing still costs a query, an empty result and an answer, and the window keeps all three: nothing is thrown away between rounds. So the cost of searching is not the cost of the search that worked, it is the cost of every search that came before it as well. Watch what one successful retrieval does to a window that two failed ones had barely touched.

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⬇ Search Rounds worksheet (2 pages)

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Next:
9. Window Sizing