CONTEXT ROT AND CONTEXT BLOAT

BLOAT VERSUS ROT Beginners sometimes confuse these two terms, so let us separate them carefully. Bloat is about the content of the window, meaning too much low-value material is in it. Rot is about the behavior of the model, meaning its accuracy falls as the window gets large. Bloat is a cause, and rot is one of the harmful effects. You can have bloat without noticeable rot if the model is strong and the task is easy. You can even see rot-like trouble in a window that has few useless items but is simply very long. The practical advice is the same for both: keep the window as small as it can be while still containing everything the next step truly needs. Engineers sometimes say the goal is the smallest set of high-signal tokens. Signal means useful information, and noise means everything else. A context with a high signal-to-noise ratio is a healthy context.