.@hammer_mt starts a fresh chat for every task, even for the same project. He does this to avoid context rot, which happens when accumulated history makes AI responses worse. These are 7 tips for context engineering: 1. Start a new thread whenever the tone or type of task changes. 2. Keep memory turned off so irrelevant context can’t leak into the current conversation. 3. Only upload the documents the task needs. 4. Keep the preferences you always want—like spelling, tone, or length—in a saved document and paste them in at the top of every new chat. 5. Write the full brief before you start and put everything the model needs into the first message rather than drip-feeding it. 6. When the AI makes a mistake, go back and edit your previous message so it has no memory of doing anything wrong. 7. Before you leave a long thread, ask the model the question Mike has recommended when working on recurring tasks: What information would have been useful to know at the start of this task that would have eliminated several steps or mistakes? Get Mike’s new book, Context Engineering with DSPy: Read the full piece: