Senior interview question
Your context fits the window. Why might you still manage it?
Model answer
Context rot: as tokens grow, the model's ability to recall information from the context decreases; Anthropic calls the context an attention budget. And every step re-reads, and pays for, the whole context.
So keep it to what the next decision needs, well before the hard limit.
Practise the rest
6 Agent memory questions, 492 in all, each with a model answer. Free.
More Agent memory interview questions
- What kinds of memory does an AI agent have?
- What goes wrong if the harness just drops the oldest messages when the context fills?
- How do you keep a long run within its context without losing what matters?
- What belongs in harness state rather than the context?
- How would you design a handoff to a sub-agent?