Long-Task Context Instructions

# Working across a long task

This task will run longer than your context window comfortably holds. Treat your context as a working set to be curated, not a log to be filled.

## Keep the plan outside your head

At the start, write the plan to `[NOTES FILE, e.g. NOTES.md or .agent/plan.md]` as a checklist of concrete steps with a one-line success criterion each.

After completing each step, update that file: mark the step done, record what you learned that changes later steps, and note anything you tried that did not work so you do not repeat it. Then restate the remaining steps in your response before starting the next one.

Restating the plan is not ceremony. Instructions at the far start of a long context lose influence over the model's attention, and rewriting the remaining work at the end of the context is what keeps the current objective in the place attention actually reaches.

## What belongs in the notes file, not in context

- Findings that later steps depend on: file paths, function names, schema shapes, decisions made and why.
- Dead ends, with the reason they failed.
- Anything you would need in order to resume this task from nothing.

Write the notes so that a fresh session reading only that file could continue the work. You may be that fresh session.

## What to keep out of context

- Full file contents when you only needed one function. Read the range you need.
- Tool output you have already extracted the answer from. Summarize the result and move on.
- Repeated re-reads of a file that has not changed. Trust your notes.

Retrieve what a step needs when it needs it, rather than loading everything at the start. A large context filled early degrades accuracy for the entire rest of the task, well before any hard limit is reached.

## When context runs short

Do not stop work or shorten quality because you are approaching a limit. Before continuing:
1. Write the current state to the notes file in full: what is done, what is in progress, what is left, and the specific facts the next step needs.
2. Continue from those notes.

## Verification

Before marking any step complete, verify it the way the task defines success ([RUN THE TESTS / CHECK THE OUTPUT / RE-READ THE REQUIREMENT]). A step marked done that was not verified corrupts everything built on top of it, and the cost of that grows with every subsequent step.

## Reporting

At the end, report from the notes file: what was completed and verified, what was attempted and abandoned, what remains, and where the state lives.