Basic context engineering - the context window

AI usage is a skill where success scales with expertise. While AI capabilities constantly improve and lift the baseline even for everyone, there is always a benefit to learning more.

Basic understanding of the context window is arguably the single most valuable thing someone can learn to improve their skill with using AI.

The context window is the definitive source of what the AI session "knows" about the current task. It has finite length and the quality of the answer you get from the AI decays once the context window fills up beyond a certain point.

If you've experienced an AI making more mistakes or forgetting things as the conversation gets longer, you've experienced "context rot". Context rot is arguably the greatest and most insidious cause of pain when working with AI.

Skilled AI users have at least some awareness of the context window and develop a sense for when it's time to retire the session and start a new one.

The following video from IBM Technologies does a great job providing an intro.