Thing is, context management is NOT obvious to most users of these tools. I use agentic coding tools on a daily basis now and still struggle with keeping context focused and useful, usually relying on patterns such as memory banks and task tracking documents to try to keep a log of things as I pop in and out of different agent contexts. Yet still, one false move and I've blown the window leading to a "compression" which is utterly useless.
The tools need to figure out how to manage context for us. This isn't something we have to deal with when working with other humans - we reliably trust that other humans (for the most part) retain what they are told. Agentic use now is like training a team mate to do one thing, then taking it out back to shoot it in the head before starting to train another one. It's inefficient and taxing on the user.
The tools need to figure out how to manage context for us. This isn't something we have to deal with when working with other humans - we reliably trust that other humans (for the most part) retain what they are told. Agentic use now is like training a team mate to do one thing, then taking it out back to shoot it in the head before starting to train another one. It's inefficient and taxing on the user.