horizon

Context Management

Overview

HORIZON — The horizon is where you look to see what's approaching before it arrives. When invoked: monitors context window health (Green / Yellow / Red), compresses stale reasoning, distills subagent context to the minimum required, and prepares clean handoff packages when a fresh session is needed.

Core principle: A full context window is a silent quality killer. Proactively manage it — don't wait until things break.

Long sessions accumulate stale reasoning, superseded decisions, and irrelevant history. Subagents given bloated context lose focus. Claude running near the limit compresses its own earlier thinking without telling you.

Announce at start: "Running HORIZON to assess and manage context health."

---

Context Health Monitor

Check context health at these triggers:

TRIGGER context health check when:
- Session has had 10+ back-and-forth exchanges
- About to dispatch a subagent
- About to start a new task after completing one
- User says "you seem confused" or repeats a correction
- You notice yourself re-reading earlier decisions

Health Assessment (30 seconds)

Ask yourself:

Question	Signal
Can I summarize the current task in 2 sentences?	Yes → healthy | No → overloaded
Are there superseded decisions still in context?	Yes → stale
Would a subagent need > 500 words of context?	Yes → compress first
Have I re-explained the same thing twice?	Yes → context drift
Am I about to start a completely new task?	Yes → consider fresh session

---

The 4 Context States

State 1: HEALTHY (< 40% full, task focused)

Action: Continue normally
Subagent dispatch: Include full relevant context

State 2: LOADED (40–70% full, some stale content)

Action: Compress before dispatching subagents
Run: Context Compression Protocol (below)
Subagent dispatch: Compressed context only

State 3: HEAVY (70–90% full, multiple topics mixed)

Action: Mandatory compression + summarize decisions
Consider: Fresh session for next major task
Subagent dispatch: Minimal essential context only
Warn: "Context is heavy — I'll give subagents a focused summary."

State 4: CRITICAL (> 90% full or visibly degrading)

Action: Stop. Save state. Recommend fresh session.
Announce: "Context is near limit. I recommend starting a fresh
           session with a state handoff to maintain quality."
DO NOT: Continue with complex reasoning at this state

---

Context Compression Protocol

Run this before dispatching any subagent or starting a new task:

Step 1: Extract Active State

Identify and keep only:

ACTIVE STATE (always keep):
- Current task: [one sentence]
- Current files in play: [list of paths]
- Decisions made THIS session that affect the work: [list]
- Constraints discovered THIS session: [list]
- Where we are in the plan: [step N of M]

Step 2: Archive Superseded Content

Mentally mark as "stale" (don't repeat in subagent context):

STALE (exclude from subagent context):
- Approaches we tried and rejected
- Earlier versions of the same decision
- Diagnostic output that led to a fix (keep the fix, drop the output)
- Exploration that dead-ended
- Re-explanations of things already understood

Step 3: Build Subagent Context Block

## Subagent Context (Compressed)

**Task:** [1 sentence]
**Goal:** [1 sentence — what done looks like]

**Key files:**
- `path/to/file.ts` — [what it does, 1 line]
- `path/to/other.py` — [what it does, 1 line]

**Decisions already made (don't re-decide):**
- [decision 1: what + why]
- [decision 2: what + why]

**Constraints (non-negotiable):**
- [constraint 1]
- [constraint 2]

**Completed steps:**
- [x] Step 1: [what was done]
- [x] Step 2: [what was done]

**Your task:**
- [ ] Step N: [exact instructions]

Target: < 400 tokens for subagent context. Ruthlessly cut anything not needed for the specific task.

---

Fresh Session Handoff Protocol

When context is CRITICAL or switching to a completely new major task:

Step 1: Write State File

Save to docs/superpowers/session-state-<date>.md:

# Session State — <date> <time>

## What Was Accomplished
- [bullet list of completed tasks with file paths]

## Current State
- In progress: [task name]
- Next steps: [numbered list]
- Blockers: [any open questions]

## Key Decisions Made
| Decision | Rationale | Affects |
|----------|-----------|---------|
| [decision] | [why] | [files] |

## Architecture Discovered
- [any non-obvious patterns in the codebase]
- [any gotchas or traps to know]

## Files Modified This Session
[git diff --stat output]

## Resume Prompt
To resume: "Continue work on [task]. State file at docs/superpowers/session-state-<date>.md. 
Run `git log --oneline -10` to see recent changes."

Step 2: Commit State

git add docs/superpowers/session-state-<date>.md
git commit -m "chore: save session state for handoff"

Step 3: Announce Handoff

SESSION STATE SAVED
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
State file: docs/superpowers/session-state-<date>.md
Commit:     <sha>

To resume in a fresh session, share the state file and say:
"Resume from session state."
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

---

Subagent Context Budget Rules

Subagent Type	Max Context	What to Include
Implementer (single task)	300 tokens	Task only + relevant file paths
Code reviewer	500 tokens	What was built + requirements + git range
Debugger	400 tokens	Error + reproduction + relevant files
Researcher/Explorer	200 tokens	Question only + scope constraint
Coordinator (swarm)	600 tokens	Full plan + progress state

Rule: If your context block exceeds budget → cut. If you can't cut below budget → split into two subagents.

---

Context Anti-Patterns

Anti-Pattern	Problem	Fix
Sending full conversation to subagent	Subagent distracted by irrelevant history	Compress to active state only
Keeping rejected approaches in context	Muddies current direction	Mark stale, exclude from subagent context
Re-explaining decisions each dispatch	Wastes tokens, inconsistent	Make one canonical decision block, reuse
Ignoring context state until it breaks	Quality degrades silently	Check health at every task boundary
Never starting fresh sessions	Context accumulates errors	Save state, start fresh for major task switches

---

Integration with Superpowers

Run before:

• commander — compress before each dispatch
• phantom — check health before each task
• legion — build clean context per topology type

Triggered by:

• oracle — check context health as part of pre-task assessment
• chronicle — store patterns before fresh session

---

Final Rule

Context is a resource — budget it like tokens
Compress before dispatching
Save state before switching
Fresh session > degraded session
Quality over continuity