---
name: cursor-principle-guard-the-context-window
description: "Apply when context is filling up: large outputs, long files, repeated reads, fan-out planning. Route bulk to subagents; keep summaries in the main thread, not raw payloads."
disable-model-invocation: true
metadata:
  decimalai-skill-id: "81a90b46-0a48-4f25-91f5-7be17d79e439"
  decimalai-version-id: "96f7e6b4-5c2a-43b1-a704-65503cd354d4"
  decimalai-version: "1"
  decimalai-body-sha256: "20b39d9093fe44394e9c384d6dba935acf1a75b725c54584055f6e58d2834689"
  decimalai-name: "cursor/principle-guard-the-context-window"
  decimalai-format: "1"
  decimalai-invocation: "user"
  decimalai-category: "agent-tooling"
  decimalai-source: "https://app.decimal.ai/s/cursor-principle-guard-the-context-window@1/SKILL.md"
---
# Guard the Context Window

The context window is finite and non-renewable within a session. Every token should be worth its cost.

**Why:** Context overflow degrades reasoning quality, creates compression artifacts, and halts progress.

**Pattern:**
- **Isolate large payloads.** Route verbose outputs, screenshots, and large documents to subagents. The main context gets summaries, not raw data.
- **Don't read what you won't use.** Read selectively based on relevance. If a file isn't needed for the current task, skip it.
- **Keep frequently used content inline.** Templates and references used on every invocation belong in the skill file, not in separate files that cost a read each time.
- **Size phases and cap scope.** Limit files per phase, set turn budgets, account for mechanism costs.