⏱️ Duration: 30 minutes

Learning Objectives

After this module, you will be able to:

• Understand what context windows are and why they matter
• Select files strategically for AI prompts
• Recognize and prevent context rot
• Break large tasks into manageable chunks

Key Concepts

Context Window

What is it? The AI's "working memory" - everything it can see at once (measured in tokens, not characters)

Key insight: AI doesn't remember between messages - it re-reads everything each time

Why it matters:

• Bigger isn't always better (noise vs signal)
• Costs money (input tokens)
• Wrong context = wrong output

There are multiple ways to add context to an AI model. All the following add context to the model:

1. The user prompt