Clearing

Clearing is deliberately wiping the context window and starting from nothing. No history, no old files, no leftover conversation. You are back to a blank agent with only its system prompt. It sounds drastic, but it is often the single most effective thing you can do when a session has gone sideways.

When to reach for it

A window full of finished, unrelated work does not just waste space, it actively degrades the agent. Old tangents pull attention, stale file contents mislead, and a wrong turn from twenty messages ago keeps colouring the model's answers. Once a session is in that state, coaxing it back on track is usually slower than a reset. Clearing is the reset.

Good moments to clear:

• You have finished one task and are starting an unrelated one. Do not make the new work compete with the old.
• The agent is stuck in a loop or keeps repeating a mistake you have already corrected.
• The window is bloated with output you no longer need.

Clearing versus compaction

Compaction tries to preserve the gist while freeing space. Clearing keeps nothing. That is the point: when the existing context is more hindrance than help, summarising it just carries the mess forward in compressed form. The cost is that you have to re-establish what you are doing, so clear when the context is genuinely spent, not mid-task.