Context-Rot Controls

What this is

Long agent sessions degrade. Context rot is the slow loss of coherence as history grows: the agent starts to contradict itself, forget active constraints, or drift from the goal. These controls keep a long session reviewable and restartable.

This complements — does not duplicate — the repo’s continuity surfaces: agent-handoffs.md, work-slice-pattern.md, and slice-finalization-and-restart.md. Those describe how to hand off and restart; this describes the signals that say it is time, and a checkpoint shape.

Signals of context rot

• the agent contradicts a previous decision;
• the agent forgets an active constraint;
• the agent repeats a question already answered;
• the agent mixes sources or projects;
• the agent uses an old plan after the scope changed;
• the agent adds complexity without new evidence;
• the agent loses track of the main objective.

Minimal controls

Checkpoint at each milestone.
Summarize the decision before a structural change.
Re-anchor to the contract when context grows too far.
Hand off when the task exceeds its original scope.
Start a new session when history hurts more than it helps.

Checkpoint template

context_checkpoint:
  task_id:
  current_goal:
  decisions_made:
    - decision:
      rationale:
      source_or_evidence:
  active_constraints:
    -
  open_questions:
    -
  next_action:
  stop_conditions:
    -

A fuller fill-in version lives in the Adaptative Skills repo (templates/context-rot-checkpoint.md).

Related

• Agent Harness Contract — declares the envelope a long session must stay within
• agent-handoffs.md, work-slice-pattern.md, slice-finalization-and-restart.md