AI Systems Atlas

X-13Files as External Context

/context/files-as-context

The agent writes findings to disk and reads back the section it needs, so the window holds pointers instead of everything learned.

Step-by-step walkthrough6 steps
  1. A long task learns far more than the window can hold.
  2. So the agent writes findings out as it goes, instead of carrying them.
  3. The plan lives on disk too — a checklist it can tick, not a paragraph it has to remember.
  4. When a step needs a fact, it reads that section back. Search the file; don’t reload it.
  5. The window ends up holding pointers and the file currently in hand.
  6. And none of it is lost to compaction — the summary can drop a detail the file still has, verbatim.
Key insight

The filesystem is memory the model can address, and unlike the window it is not lossy. A note written in step 3 is still exact in step 40, after every compaction in between.

Failure mode

Writing notes and never reading them. Without a habit of searching its own files first, the agent re-derives what it already wrote down and pays twice.

Further reading
RelatedState representationContext compactionCheckpointing

Elsewhere in the atlas

Harnesses →Security →Evals →Coding Agents →Tools →Ops →