The rules that survive the quest
- Context is a budget, not a warehouse.
- Capacity is not uniform quality; attention drifts.
- Do not drive to the wall; keep safety margin.
- Compaction is useful but lossy; checkpoint first.
- The human collaborator owns meaning, priority, and authority.
- Use the library strategy: index, load, work, evict.
- Cache stable prefixes; put volatility in the tail.
- Audit the model with evidence; allow it to admit gaps.
- Recover from rot by capture, reset, reload — not more reminders.
- Current source beats stale notes.
The working mantra
The right amount of the right context, in the right order, with the right human steering, beats the biggest possible blob. That is the whole spell. Annoyingly simple. Difficult enough to be worth a quest.
The winner is not the largest context. The winner is the cleanest operating loop.