Comment by EMM_386
5 days ago
The context window isn't "crippled".
Create a markdown document of your task (or use CLAUDE.md), put it in "plan mode" which allows Claude to use tool calls to ask questions before it generates the plan.
When it finishes one part of the plan, have it create a another markdown document - "progress.md" or whatever with the whole plan and what is completed at that point.
Type /clear (no more context window), tell Claude to read the two documents.
Repeat until even a massive project is complete - with those 2 markdown documents and no context window issues.
> The context window isn't "crippled".
... Proceeds to explain how it's crippled and all the workarounds you have to do to make it less crippled.
> ... Proceeds to explain how it's crippled and all the workarounds you have to do to make it less crippled.
No - that's not what I did.
You don't need an extra-long context full of irrelevant tokens. Claude doesn't need to see the code it implemented 40 steps ago in a working method from Phase 1 if it is on Phase 3 and not using that method. It doesn't need reasoning traces for things it already "thought" through.
This other information is cluttering, not helpful. It is making signal to noise ratio worse.
If Claude needs to know something it did in Phase 1 for Phase 4 it will put a note on it in the living markdown document to simply find it again when it needs it.
Again, you're basically explaining how Claude has a very short limited context and you have to implement multiple workarounds to "prevent cluttering". Aka: try to keep context as small as possible, restart context often, try and feed it only small relevant information.
What I very succinctly called "crippled context" despite claims that Opus 4.5 is somehow "next tier". It's all the same techniques we've been using for over a year now.
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