Context management with work-in-progress

An agent needs a small, targeted context. Never a full dump. Keep the work in a topic folder, keep the lasting knowledge in the catalogue, and hand the agent a ctx bundle.

The problem

An agent session starts empty. Load everything and the useful lines drown in noise. Load nothing and the agent guesses. It gets worse when notes, plans and lasting knowledge sit in the same place: nobody can tell what is still true.

One topic, one folder

Give each topic its own folder: work-in-progress/<topic-slug>/. It holds the thinking and planning chain, drafts and intermediate results. It is short-lived, but fully traceable.

Every file in it carries OKF frontmatter, and type is never empty. That keeps the folder readable for okf and for agents.

Promote what lasts

Ask one question of each statement: is it lasting and reusable?

• Yes: it moves into the catalogue.
• No: it stays in the topic, or you discard it.

Each claim gets exactly one home. After the move, the topic points at the catalogue instead of copying it. Two copies drift apart.

Agents read through ctx

A ctx bundle is a curated reading list in reading order. okf ctx show prints it with the title and type of every entry, read live from the files, so the list does not go stale. Each entry has a mode:

Mode	Meaning
pflicht	The agent must read it, in the given position.
nachschlag	Reference: look it up when needed.

An example: load the Git canon before a hotfix, and nothing else. Put the bundle in the prompt instead of a list of paths.

okf ctx show onboarding

In practice

1. Create the topic folder.
2. Work in it.
3. Move what lasts into the catalogue.
4. Archive the topic.

Hand over context with ctx, not with path lists in the prompt.

In short

• The topic folder is the workbench.
• The catalogue is the memory.
• ctx is the interface to the agent.

See also Context bundles and Onboard agents.