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Diffstat (limited to 'working/context-engineering-rightsizing/proposals.org')
| -rw-r--r-- | working/context-engineering-rightsizing/proposals.org | 99 |
1 files changed, 65 insertions, 34 deletions
diff --git a/working/context-engineering-rightsizing/proposals.org b/working/context-engineering-rightsizing/proposals.org index 40bfcf8..1300a7b 100644 --- a/working/context-engineering-rightsizing/proposals.org +++ b/working/context-engineering-rightsizing/proposals.org @@ -8,33 +8,61 @@ Proposals only. Nothing here is applied. Source: three Anthropic posts Craig supplied 2026-07-27 — the Claude 5 context-engineering post (2026-07-24), the Opus 5 prompting guide, and the Fable 5 field guide (2026-07-06). -* The measurement - -Every session in every project loads this before the user's first word: - -| Surface | Words | -|--------------------------+--------| -| =claude-rules/= (20 files) | 25,386 | -|--------------------------+--------| -| =protocols.org= | 6,620 | -|--------------------------+--------| -| Project =CLAUDE.md= | 117 | -|--------------------------+--------| -| *Total* | 32,123 | -|--------------------------+--------| - -Roughly 40,000 tokens of always-on context. The context-engineering post reports -Anthropic cut over 80% of Claude Code's *system prompt* with no measurable loss -on their coding evals. That's their number on their surface, not a target for -this one, but the direction is the finding: this system is built in the "then" -style the post retired. - -The content isn't the problem. The post says skills are best when they "encode -particular opinions, knowledge, or best practices particular to you" — which is -exactly what these rules are. The problem is *load timing*: all of it is -resident on every turn, including =commits.md= (5,561 words) in a session that -never commits, and =todo-format.md= (4,494 words) in a session that never opens -an org file. +* Goal + +Output quality and results first. Token reduction is a real goal and worth +having, but it is the second one, and where the two conflict quality wins. +Craig's framing, 2026-07-27: the concern is agents having the freedom to +produce at their highest capacity, unbound by guardrails that constrain them or +work against them. + +That reordering matters more than it sounds. Anthropic's 80% figure was a +*finding* — they cut and quality held — not a target. Aimed at directly it +optimizes the thing we don't care about, and P4 below is the proposal that +falls to it. + +* The measurement (corrected 2026-07-27 from live =/context=) + +The original figures in this document were word counts converted at a guessed +ratio, and they understated by about 45%. A =/context= run in a live work +session gave the real numbers: + +| Surface | Tokens | +|------------------------------------+--------| +| =claude-rules/= before this session | 57,800 | +|------------------------------------+--------| +| =claude-rules/= now (17 files) | 44,410 | +|------------------------------------+--------| +| Path-scoped out (3 files) | 13,390 | +|------------------------------------+--------| + +The real ratio is 2.28 tokens per word, not the ~1.3 assumed. =commits.md= +alone is 12,800 tokens, not the ~7,000 estimated. Every earlier figure here +should be read as low. + +** Two loading paths, not one + +The original framing called 32,123 words "always-loaded" and was wrong to +lump them. They arrive by different mechanisms: + +- *Memory files* — =claude-rules/= (via the =~/.claude/rules/= symlinks), + =CLAUDE.md=, project =.claude/rules/=, and auto-memory's =MEMORY.md=. Loaded + at session start by the harness. This is the 44,410 above, plus CLAUDE.md and + project rules. +- *Read during startup* — =protocols.org= and the workflow files. These never + appear under Memory files in =/context=; the startup workflow reads them, so + they land in Messages. Still a real per-session cost, but a different lever: + they shrink by editing the workflow, not by scoping a rule. + +Conflating the two made =protocols.org= look like it competed with +=commits.md= for the same fix. It doesn't. + +** What the harness says on its own + +=/context= ends with its own suggestion: prune =commits.md= (12.8k), +=testing.md= (6.3k), and =MEMORY.md= (5.5k). That is the Phase 4 target list, +arrived at independently. Worth treating as corroboration rather than +coincidence. * Proposals @@ -106,7 +134,7 @@ always-loaded core — otherwise this proposal fights the one above it. *Confidence.* Medium-high on the practices being useful. Lower on the quiz, which may not fit how you actually work. -** P4 — Effort calibration on the unattended loops [medium value, low risk] +** P4 — Effort calibration [DROPPED 2026-07-27 — trades quality for cost] *Change.* Sentry, work-the-backlog, and the no-approvals speedrun run many passes at default effort. The Opus 5 guide says to use =low= and =medium= @@ -116,11 +144,11 @@ for demanding work. *Why.* Sentry fires hourly. Effort is the lever with the largest cost multiple, and most sentry passes are mechanical sweeps. -*Confidence.* Medium. The guide says to re-run an effort sweep on your own -evals rather than trusting carried-over defaults, and we have no evals — so -this wants a trial and a judgment, not a blanket change. +*Dropped.* Lowering effort buys tokens by spending quality, which is exactly +backwards under the goal above. Revisit only if a specific pass proves +genuinely mechanical and a cost problem shows up on its own. -** P5 — Positive framing over prohibition [low value, low risk, slow] +** P5 — Positive framing over prohibition [PROMOTED — now the top quality lever] *Change.* =commits.md= carries 41 prohibition markers (NEVER / DO NOT / MANDATORY / CRITICAL) across 5,561 words. =todo-format.md= 21, @@ -133,8 +161,11 @@ tend to be more effective than instructions about what not to do." *Keep as prohibitions:* the AI-attribution rule and anything else where the worst case is genuinely unacceptable. Those earn their emphasis. -*Confidence.* Medium. Real but diffuse, and it competes with P1 for the same -editing effort. Probably rides along with P1 rather than standing alone. +*Promoted 2026-07-27.* Ranked low when the score was token savings. Under a +quality-first goal this is the proposal that most directly targets guardrails +working against good output, which is the stated concern. It still rides along +with the Phase 4 edits rather than running as its own campaign, because every +file it touches is a file those phases open anyway. ** P6 — Deduplicate the two always-loaded surfaces [medium value, low risk] |