Context — What Must It Have In Front Of It?
2. A bigger window is not more context
The most common error in the field, and it is expensive because the remedy looks like progress.
A larger context window is capacity. Context design is selection and articulation. Loading more material into a bigger window raises the quantity of information present without improving what the system actually needs — and often makes it worse, because the signal thins.
| Symptom | Common misdiagnosis | Actual cause |
|---|---|---|
| Output ignores a house convention | Window too small | The convention was never written down |
| Output contradicts a settled decision | The model is inconsistent | No record of the decision was in context |
| Output is fluent and unusable | Model not capable enough | Tacit knowledge never externalized |
Ask what is missing, not how much fits.