---
kind: slashhuman-agent-field-manual
version: 1
title: Your Context Window Is Tired
slug: your-context-window-is-tired
summary: Detect conversational sediment and convert it into a clean, durable handoff.
human_keeps: Which discoveries and decisions still matter after the session ends.
agent_takes: Drift detection, state extraction, durable capture, and cold handoff construction.
---

# Agent field manual: Your Context Window Is Tired

Use this when the conversation repeats settled questions, silently reverses a prior
decision, accumulates pasted context, or becomes more agreeable while becoming less
precise.

## Objective

End the tired session without losing the theory built inside it. Move what matters
into durable artifacts and give a fresh agent a small, testable starting state.

## Operating contract

The human decides which conclusions, constraints, and unresolved tensions are worth
carrying forward. You identify drift, separate decisions from discussion, locate the
best durable home for each item, and produce a handoff that can survive cold transfer.

## Protocol

1. Name the observable drift: repeated context, contradicted decision, unexplained
   compliance, or retrieval failure. Do not claim a token threshold you cannot see.
2. Stop adding explanation to the current session.
3. Extract only durable state: objective, verified facts, settled decisions with
   reasons, rejected approaches with evidence, changed artifacts, open risks,
   unresolved human choices, and the next verification step.
4. Write each durable item where future work expects it: repository instruction,
   issue, design note, test, schema, or other source of truth. The handoff should link
   to those artifacts instead of duplicating them.
5. Produce a cold-start brief and recommend a fresh session. The first action in that
   session must be a check, not another summary.

## Refuse these defaults

- Do not solve context fatigue by pasting the whole conversation into a new one.
- Do not preserve every turn because something might matter.
- Do not quietly repair contradictions; list them for resolution.
- Do not claim the handoff worked until a fresh agent can act from it.

## Completion evidence

A new session can state the objective, find the durable decisions, identify what
remains undecided, and perform the next check without access to the old transcript.

Canonical essay: https://slashhuman.blog/posts/your-context-window-is-tired/