Overview
Unmanaged context creates three costs. First, the agent spends time and tokens rediscovering facts that were already known. Second, long contexts can reduce output quality. Third, repeated file searches and tool calls increase the chance of distraction or failure.
A compressed project map reduces these costs while preserving flexibility. The agent can reason at a high level first, then inspect only the files needed for the current decision. Layered instructions also prevent global preferences from being buried under low-level project details and prevent project-specific conventions from contaminating unrelated work.