“A big context window doesn’t mean your agent can use big context.” That was the centre of my original note. For a marketing, documentation or research workflow, the important distinction is between context that is available, context that is relevant and context that is usable for the decision at hand.

Editorial rendering of Reda’s practical pipeline
  1. Task Define the decision or output the workflow must support.
  2. Select Choose the information the task actually needs.
  3. Retrieve Make the selected material available in a traceable way.
  4. Review Check what entered the process before trusting the output.

Available is not relevant

A shared drive, product archive or long conversation may contain material that matters somewhere. That does not make all of it useful for one brief. A selection rule can be modest: what does this task need to know, what source can support it and what should remain outside the prompt because it would distract from the decision?

Review the input as well as the output

When an AI-assisted draft is wrong, the first repair is not always another prompt. Inspect the task, the selected material and the retrieval path. This is how context becomes a designed input rather than a quantity of text.

Questions

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between a context window and useful context?

A context window is capacity. Useful context is material selected and organised for a particular task.

How should an agent workflow select context?

Start with the decision, then identify the minimum source material and the review needed for that decision.

Why review retrieved context?

It lets a person see whether the process received the material the task actually required.

What supports a claim of improved reliability?

A defined baseline, test method and observed evidence are needed before making that claim.

Related work and expertise