Writing

2026-02-10 · 8 min

Why Context Windows Are The Wrong Abstraction

My thoughts on long-term memory for AI systems, and why stuffing the prompt is not a strategy.

AI · Memory

Context memory flowCorpusEmbedRankInjectbudget-aware retrieval
Selection policy matters more than raw window size.

Context windows feel like progress because they are measurable. Bigger number, more room, problem solved.

In practice, stuffing more text into a prompt rarely creates better long-horizon behavior. It creates noisier attention, higher cost, and systems that cannot explain what they used.

A better abstraction is memory with a budget: store broadly, retrieve narrowly, and cite what entered the prompt. The window is a packing constraint, not the product.