--- title: Your Agent's Context Window Is Not a Junk Drawer | daily.dev description: Context rot is a real phenomenon where LLM agent performance degrades significantly as the context window fills up — accuracy can drop up to 30% going from 300... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/your-agent-s-context-window-is-not-a-junk-drawer-159qecsm4 twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Your Agent's Context Window Is Not a Junk Drawer | daily.dev og:description: Context rot is a real phenomenon where LLM agent performance degrades significantly as the context window fills up — accuracy can drop up to 30% going from 300... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/your-agent-s-context-window-is-not-a-junk-drawer-159qecsm4 og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/159QECsM4.png og:image:alt: Your Agent's Context Window Is Not a Junk Drawer og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Your Agent's Context Window Is Not a Junk Drawer **[RUBYLAND](https://daily.dev/sources/rubyla)** · 4 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Context rot is a real phenomenon where LLM agent performance degrades significantly as the context window fills up — accuracy can drop up to 30% going from 300 to 113k tokens. The post argues that most agent setups treat the context window carelessly, and offers concrete strategies: replace MCP servers with hand-crafted, minimal tools you control; use progressive disclosure in tool responses instead of dumping full documents or large JSON blobs; keep system prompts focused rather than exhaustive; and load only the tools a specific task requires, routing to specialized sub-agents instead of one bloated agent. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [The Context Window Myth: Why Bigger Isn’t Always Better in LLM Applications](https://daily.dev/posts/the-context-window-myth-why-bigger-isn-t-always-better-in-llm-applications-by4yg2kso) · Medium · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [How context rot drags down AI and LLM results for enterprises, and how to fix it](https://daily.dev/posts/how-context-rot-drags-down-ai-and-llm-results-for-enterprises-and-how-to-fix-it-j9qmejmkz) · The New Stack · 2 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#rag](https://daily.dev/tags/rag), [#mcp](https://daily.dev/tags/mcp) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/your-agent-s-context-window-is-not-a-junk-drawer-159qecsm4) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Your Agent's Context Window Is Not a Junk Drawer","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/your-agent-s-context-window-is-not-a-junk-drawer-159qecsm4","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/your-agent-s-context-window-is-not-a-junk-drawer-159qecsm4"},"datePublished":"2026-04-07T01:33:04.693Z","dateModified":"2026-04-07T01:33:29.242Z","description":"Context rot is a real phenomenon where LLM agent performance degrades significantly as the context window fills up — accuracy can drop up to 30% going from 300...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/5633122ba32b00c6fbf4921e0ee5bfed?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/5633122ba32b00c6fbf4921e0ee5bfed?_a=AQAEuop","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"RUBYLAND","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"RUBYLAND","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/t_logo,f_auto/v1/logos/rubyla","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/rubyla"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/your-agent-s-context-window-is-not-a-junk-drawer-159qecsm4","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":0},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"rag,mcp","timeRequired":"PT4M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"RUBYLAND","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/rubyla"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Your Agent's Context Window Is Not a Junk Drawer"}]} ```