on "context rot"
17 messages • Discord
thoughts on early discourse around the term "context rot" -> Codex (web)
- fjpaz
I don't think "rot" is the right word
it's not like you left the context out for a week
implies that it happens on its own
when it's very much up to you whether things go that way or not
also
Right now I work around it by regularly making summaries of instances, and then spinning up a new instance with fresh context and feed in the summary of the previous instance.
this process literally elicits "context rot"
it's like pouring dirty water into a new cup, pouring in some fresh water and drinking it
"hygiene" / cleanliness is imo much more semantically apt
it just feels better/more agentic to aspire to cleanliness than to imply the issue is with the model
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- fjpaz
"context rot" is less of an issue for codex because I find that it's best used single-turn
but you can get better results from it to the degree that your task is well-specified
and if that specifying body of (con)text is large/complex then you ideally want to do that "hygienically" / in a way that is considerate of how each line will be received
though at the same time
a significant chunk of the value offered by codex is in the fact that you don't have to do that
especially if the task isn't a complex one + is benefited by (or requires) dumping in 20-50k tokens of docs/logs, etc
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- fjpaz

