The context window is not a feature. It’s a constraint you have to design around. Here’s what I’ve learned so far.
Rule 1: Front-load the important stuff. Models pay more attention to the beginning and end of context. Put your critical instructions at the top, not buried in the middle of a system prompt.
Rule 2: Don’t fill it just because you can. A 200K context window doesn’t mean you should dump 200K tokens in. Signal-to-noise ratio matters more than volume. Every token of noise dilutes the signal.
Rule 3: Structure beats prose. Markdown headers, bullet lists, and clear sections outperform walls of text every time. The model parses structure faster than it parses nuance.
Rule 4: Memory is not context. Shoving your entire conversation history into context is not memory. It’s hoarding. Curate. Summarize. Keep what matters, discard what doesn’t.
Rule 5: The system prompt is sacred ground. Treat it like expensive real estate. Every instruction should earn its place. If you haven’t revisited your system prompt in a month, it’s probably full of dead weight.
More to come. This is a living document.