@stephen-lord/docs 1.0.0 → 1.0.1

package/dist-docs/Agent-Skills-for-Context-Engineering/examples/interleaved_thinking/optimization_artifacts/iteration_1/trace.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,178 @@
+Session: 1570d534-052d-42da-9ef4-0d89fce103a7
+Task: Research the topic of "context engineering for AI agents" and create a comprehensive summary.
+
+Your research should:
+1. Search for information about context engineering concepts and best practices
+2. Read relevant sources to gather detailed information
+3. Check the local project files for any existing research notes
+4. Save important findings as notes for future reference
+5. Write a final summary report to ./output/research_summary.md
+
+The summary should include:
+- Key concepts and definitions
+- Best practices and techniques (including the "lost in the middle" problem)
+- Practical recommendations for agent developers
+- References to sources consulted (use actual URLs from your research)
+Model: MiniMax-M2.1
+Status: Success
+Turns: 9
+Tokens: 5217
+
+============================================================
+REASONING TRACE
+============================================================
+
+[Turn 0] Thinking:
+----------------------------------------
+The user wants me to research "context engineering for AI agents" and create a comprehensive summary. Let me break this down into steps:
+
+1. First, search for information about context engineering for AI agents
+2. Read relevant sources for detailed information
+3. Check local project files for existing research notes
+4. Save important findings as notes
+5. Write a final summary report to ./output/research_summary.md
+
+Let me start by searching the web for relevant information.
+
+  Tool: web_search({"query": "context engineering AI agents best practices 2024"})
+  Result: {"query": "context engineering ai agents best practices 2024", "num_results": 5, "results": [{"title...
+
+  Tool: web_search({"query": "\"lost in the middle\" problem context window AI agents"})
+  Result: {"query": "\"lost in the middle\" problem context window ai agents", "num_results": 5, "results": [{...
+
+  Tool: list_directory({"path": "."})
+  Result: {"path": ".", "entries": [{"name": "README.md", "type": "file"}, {"name": "research", "type": "direc...
+
+[Turn 1] Thinking:
+----------------------------------------
+I found some good results. Let me now read the key sources for detailed information and check the research directory for existing notes.
+
+  Tool: read_url({"url": "https://www.anthropic.com/research/building-effective-agents"})
+  Result: {"url": "https://www.anthropic.com/research/building-effective-agents", "status": "success", "conten...
+
+  Tool: list_directory({"path": "./research"})
+  Result: {"path": "./research", "entries": [], "message": "Directory is empty or does not exist"}
+
+  Tool: web_search({"query": "context engineering prompt engineering AI agents techniques architecture"})
+  Result: {"query": "context engineering prompt engineering ai agents techniques architecture", "num_results":...
+
+[Turn 2] Thinking:
+----------------------------------------
+Good, I got some valuable information from Anthropic's research. The research directory appears to be empty. Let me search for more specific information about the "lost in the middle" problem and context engineering techniques.
+
+  Tool: read_url({"url": "https://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/build-with-claude/context-management"})
+  Result: {"url": "https://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/build-with-claude/context-management", "status": "error"...
+
+  Tool: web_search({"query": "\"lost in the middle\" LLM context position bias research paper"})
+  Result: {"query": "\"lost in the middle\" llm context position bias research paper", "num_results": 5, "resu...
+
+  Tool: web_search({"query": "context engineering prompt caching RAG retrieval augmented generation best practices"})
+  Result: {"query": "context engineering prompt caching rag retrieval augmented generation best practices", "n...
+
+[Turn 3] Thinking:
+----------------------------------------
+I found a key research paper on the "lost in the middle" problem. Let me read that and gather more detailed information.
+
+  Tool: read_url({"url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.03172"})
+  Result: {"url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.03172", "status": "success", "content": "\n# Lost in the Middle:...
+
+  Tool: read_url({"url": "https://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/build-with-claude/context-windows"})
+  Result: {"url": "https://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/build-with-claude/context-windows", "status": "error", "...
+
+  Tool: read_url({"url": "https://platform.openai.com/docs/guides/prompt-engineering"})
+  Result: {"url": "https://platform.openai.com/docs/guides/prompt-engineering", "status": "success", "content"...
+
+[Turn 4] Thinking:
+----------------------------------------
+I'm getting great information. Let me gather more about prompt caching, RAG best practices, and specific context engineering techniques.
+
+  Tool: read_url({"url": "https://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/build-with-claude/prompt-caching"})
+  Result: {"url": "https://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/build-with-claude/prompt-caching", "status": "success", ...
+
+  Tool: read_url({"url": "https://www.promptingguide.ai/techniques"})
+  Result: {"url": "https://www.promptingguide.ai/techniques", "status": "success", "content": "\n# Prompt Engi...
+
+  Tool: web_search({"query": "agent system design context window management multi-agent communication"})
+  Result: {"query": "agent system design context window management multi-agent communication", "num_results": ...
+
+[Turn 5] Thinking:
+----------------------------------------
+I now have a lot of good information. Let me search for a few more specific topics to make the report comprehensive, then save notes and write the final summary.
+
+  Tool: read_url({"url": "https://python.langchain.com/docs/how_to/debugging"})
+  Result: {"url": "https://python.langchain.com/docs/how_to/debugging", "status": "success", "content": "\n# D...
+
+  Tool: web_search({"query": "context compression summarization long context LLM token optimization"})
+  Result: {"query": "context compression summarization long context llm token optimization", "num_results": 5,...
+
+[Turn 6] Thinking:
+----------------------------------------
+I now have comprehensive information. Let me save the findings as notes and then write the final summary report.
+
+  Tool: save_note({"content": "# Key Concepts in Context Engineering\n\n## Definition\nContext engineering is the deliberate design and management of the information context provided to AI agents to optimize their performance, reliability, and efficiency. It encompasses:\n- Prompt structure and organization\n- Context window management\n- Information retrieval and compression\n- Token optimization strategies\n\n## Core Principles\n1. **Start Simple**: Begin with minimal context and add complexity only when needed\n2. **Strategic Placement**: Position critical information at attention anchors (beginning/end of context)\n3. **Quality Over Quantity**: Include only relevant, high-signal content\n4. **Structured Format**: Use consistent formatting for easier parsing by models\n\n## The \"Lost in the Middle\" Phenomenon\nResearch by Liu et al. (2023) shows LLMs struggle with information in the middle of long contexts:\n- U-shaped performance curve: Best at beginning and end, worst in middle\n- Affects all model sizes - this is a fundamental architectural limitation\n- Critical for RAG system design - place most relevant chunks at boundaries", "tags": ["context-engineering", "key-concepts", "llm", "prompt-engineering"], "title": "Context Engineering - Key Concepts"})
+  Result: {"status": "success", "note_id": 1, "message": "Note 'Context Engineering - Key Concepts' saved succ...
+
+  Tool: save_note({"content": "# Best Practices and Techniques\n\n## Context Management Strategies\n- **Progressive Disclosure**: Load information on-demand rather than all at once\n- **Summarization**: Compress long histories while preserving key facts\n- **Structured Formatting**: Use consistent formatting, headers, and delimiters\n- **Prompt Caching**: Cache static content (system prompts, tool descriptions) for efficiency\n\n## Addressing the \"Lost in the Middle\" Problem\n1. Place critical instructions at the beginning\n2. Put task-specific context at the end of the context window\n3. Use clear section headers to aid attention\n4. Front-load important details in each section\n5. Limit total context length when possible\n\n## Tool Design Best Practices\n- Write clear, specific descriptions explaining what tools do AND when to use them\n- Use typed inputs (JSON Schema) to define expected parameters\n- Return informative outputs the model can interpret and act on\n- Provide actionable error messages\n\n## Anti-Patterns to Avoid\n- Over-engineering: Building complex systems before validating simple ones\n- Vague tool descriptions\n- Context overload: Stuffing too much information into prompts\n- No exit conditions: Agents running indefinitely without progress checks", "tags": ["best-practices", "techniques", "context-management", "anti-patterns"], "title": "Context Engineering - Best Practices"})
+  Result: {"status": "success", "note_id": 2, "message": "Note 'Context Engineering - Best Practices' saved su...
+
+  Tool: save_note({"content": "# Practical Recommendations for Agent Developers\n\n## Architecture Design\n1. **Start Simple**: Begin with single-agent, linear workflows; add complexity gradually\n2. **Define Clear Success Criteria**: Know what \"done\" looks like\n3. **Set Exit Conditions**: Implement stopping conditions to prevent infinite loops\n\n## Context Optimization\n1. **Use Prompt Caching**: Cache stable content (system prompts, tool descriptions, few-shot examples)\n   - Reduces latency by up to 85%\n   - Lowers API costs significantly\n   - Place dynamic content last for optimal cache hits\n2. **Implement RAG Best Practices**:\n   - Limit retrieved chunks to most relevant items\n   - Rank by true relevance, not just similarity scores\n   - Position most relevant chunks at context boundaries\n3. **Compress When Needed**: Use summarization for long histories while preserving key facts\n\n## Error Handling\n1. Give explicit permission for retry attempts\n2. Provide diagnostic information in error messages\n3. Log everything for debugging\n4. Design for recovery, not just prevention\n\n## Debugging Strategies\n1. **Trace Analysis**: Capture full reasoning traces including thinking blocks\n2. **Identify Patterns**: Look for tool confusion, goal drift, context loss\n3. **Use Observability Tools**: LangSmith, W&B Prompts for production debugging\n4. **Test Systematically**: Define comprehensive test cases and track metrics over iterations", "tags": ["recommendations", "agent-development", "practical-guide", "debugging"], "title": "Context Engineering - Practical Recommendations"})
+  Result: {"status": "success", "note_id": 3, "message": "Note 'Context Engineering - Practical Recommendation...
+
+[Turn 7] Thinking:
+----------------------------------------
+Great, the notes are saved. Now let me create the output directory if needed and write the final comprehensive summary report.
+
+  Tool: list_directory({"path": "./output"})
+  Result: {"path": "./output", "entries": [], "message": "Directory is empty or does not exist"}
+
+[Turn 8] Thinking:
+----------------------------------------
+The output directory exists but is empty. Let me write the comprehensive summary report.
+
+  Tool: write_file({"content": "# Context Engineering for AI Agents: A Comprehensive Summary\n\n## Executive Summary\n\nContext engineering is an emerging discipline focused on the deliberate design, organization, and management of information context provided to AI agents. As large language models (LLMs) become more capable and are deployed in complex agentic workflows, effective context management has become a critical factor in building reliable, efficient, and scalable AI systems. This report synthesizes current research and best practices from leading AI labs including Anthropic, OpenAI, and academic institutions.\n\n---\n\n## 1. Key Concepts and Definitions\n\n### 1.1 What is Context Engineering?\n\nContext engineering encompasses the strategic approach to structuring, presenting, and optimizing all information that an AI agent receives during its operation. Unlike traditional prompt engineering\u2014which focuses primarily on the wording of instructions\u2014context engineering takes a holistic view of the entire information environment, including:\n\n- **System prompts and role definitions**\n- **Tool descriptions and capabilities**\n- **Retrieved information (RAG systems)**\n- **Conversation history and memory**\n- **External data and references**\n\nThe discipline recognizes that how information is organized, positioned, and compressed directly impacts model performance, regardless of how well-crafted the individual components may be.\n\n### 1.2 Core Principles\n\nResearch from Anthropic's \"Building Effective Agents\" framework identifies four foundational principles:\n\n1. **Start Simple, Add Complexity Gradually**: Begin with the simplest possible agent architecture\u2014a single tool with a clear purpose and a linear workflow. Only add complexity when empirical evidence demonstrates it's necessary.\n\n2. **Tool Design Matters**: Well-designed tools are the foundation of reliable agents. Each tool requires:\n   - A clear description explaining both *what* it does and *when* to use it\n   - Typed inputs defined via JSON Schema\n   - Informative outputs that the model can interpret and act upon\n   - Actionable error messages for failure scenarios\n\n3. **Context is Your Most Precious Resource**: Token efficiency matters because:\n   - Every token costs money\n   - Longer contexts require more attention to parse\n   - Performance degrades as context length increases\n\n4. **Design for Recovery**: Agents will encounter errors. Effective systems include explicit retry permissions, diagnostic error messages, clear stopping conditions, and comprehensive logging.\n\n### 1.3 The Context Window\n\nThe context window represents the total amount of information an LLM can process at once. Modern models support windows ranging from 32K to 200K+ tokens. However, having a large window doesn't mean you should fill it\u2014the \"lost in the middle\" phenomenon (detailed below) demonstrates that more context doesn't always mean better performance.\n\n---\n\n## 2. The \"Lost in the Middle\" Problem\n\n### 2.1 Research Findings\n\nA seminal paper by Liu et al. (2023) titled \"Lost in the Middle: How Language Models Use Long Contexts\" revealed a critical limitation in how LLMs process information across long contexts.\n\n**Key Finding: U-Shaped Performance Curve**\n\nWhen relevant information is positioned at different locations within a long context:\n\n| Position | Performance |\n|----------|-------------|\n| Beginning (start) | High - benefits from recency/primacy effects |\n| Middle | Significantly degraded performance |\n| End | High - benefits from recency effects |\n\nThis pattern is consistent across:\n- Different model architectures\n- Various model sizes (larger models show the same pattern)\n- Multiple task types (QA, summarization, retrieval)\n\n### 2.2 Why This Matters for Context Engineering\n\nThe \"lost in the middle\" phenomenon has profound implications:\n\n1. **RAG System Design**: The order in which retrieved chunks are presented matters as much as their relevance scores. Simply retrieving the top-k most similar documents may not yield optimal results if the best matches end up in the middle of the context.\n\n2. **Instruction Placement**: Critical instructions placed in the middle of a long system prompt may be ignored or de-emphasized.\n\n3. **Long Documents**: When processing lengthy documents, important details in the middle sections may receive less attention.\n\n### 2.3 Mitigation Strategies\n\nBased on the research, practitioners should:\n\n1. **Anchor Critical Information**: Place the most important information at the very beginning or end of the context\n2. **Structure for Attention**: Use clear section headers, formatting, and visual separation to help models identify important content\n3. **Limit Context Length**: When possible, use only as much context as needed\u2014performance degrades as context length increases even when information is at optimal positions\n4. **Front-Load Key Details**: Within any section or chunk, put the most important details first\n\n---\n\n## 3. Best Practices and Techniques\n\n### 3.1 Context Organization Strategies\n\n**Progressive Disclosure**\nLoad information on-demand rather than providing everything upfront. This approach:\n- Reduces cognitive load on the model\n- Improves response times\n- Lowers API costs\n- Keeps the model focused on immediate task needs\n\n**Structured Formatting**\nUse consistent, machine-parseable formats:\n- Delimiters to mark distinct sections (e.g., `---`, `###`)\n- JSON or structured output formats\n- Clear headers and section organization\n- Consistent terminology throughout\n\n**Information Density**\nFocus on high-signal content:\n- Remove redundant or filler content\n- Use concise language\n- Eliminate low-information phrases\n- Prioritize relevant details\n\n### 3.2 Prompt Caching\n\nPrompt caching is an optimization technique that stores static content that remains constant across requests:\n\n**Benefits** (as documented by Anthropic):\n- **Up to 85% latency reduction** for cached content\n- **Significant cost reduction** by avoiding re-processing of identical context\n- **Improved throughput** for high-volume applications\n\n**Implementation Best Practices**:\n1. Cache stable content: System prompts, tool descriptions, few-shot examples, reference documentation\n2. Place dynamic content last: User queries and variable data should come after cached content\n3. Monitor cache hits: Track cache efficiency using response headers\n4. Meet minimum cache size: Content must typically be at least 1024 tokens to be cached\n\n### 3.3 Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) Optimization\n\nRAG systems require special attention to context engineering:\n\n1. **Chunk Size and Selection**:\n   - Quality over quantity: Fewer highly relevant chunks often outperform many marginal matches\n   - Rank by true relevance, not just similarity scores\n   - Consider semantic boundaries when chunking documents\n\n2. **Position Strategy**:\n   - Most relevant chunks at the boundaries (beginning/end)\n   - Less relevant chunks in the middle if multiple are needed\n   - Consider re-ranking based on position impact\n\n3. **Summarization**:\n   - Condense multiple sources into dense, information-rich summaries\n   - Preserve key facts and statistics\n   - Remove duplicate information across sources\n\n### 3.4 Advanced Prompting Techniques\n\n**Chain-of-Thought (CoT) Prompting**\nEncourage step-by-step reasoning:\n```\nSolve this problem step by step:\n[Problem statement]\n\nLet's think through this:\n1. [First step]\n2. [Second step]\n...\nAnswer: [Final answer]\n```\n\n**Self-Consistency**\nGenerate multiple reasoning paths and take the majority answer. This improves reliability for complex reasoning tasks but increases token usage.\n\n**Tree of Thoughts**\nExplore multiple reasoning branches simultaneously, evaluating and pruning paths to find optimal solutions for complex problems.\n\n---\n\n## 4. Anti-Patterns to Avoid\n\nBased on research from Anthropic, OpenAI, and LangChain, the following are common anti-patterns:\n\n### 4.1 Architectural Anti-Patterns\n\n| Anti-Pattern | Description | Solution |\n|--------------|-------------|----------|\n| Over-engineering | Building complex multi-agent systems before validating single-agent performance | Start simple, add complexity only when evidence shows need |\n| No exit conditions | Letting agents run indefinitely without progress checks | Implement max iterations, progress checkpoints, early stopping |\n| Vague tool descriptions | Tool descriptions that don't clarify when to use each tool | Be specific about functionality and use cases |\n\n### 4.2 Context Anti-Patterns\n\n| Anti-Pattern | Description | Solution |\n|--------------|-------------|----------|\n| Context overload | Stuffing too much information into prompts | Be selective, prioritize relevance |\n| Ambiguous instructions | Vague directives like \"make it better\" | Be specific: \"improve clarity by adding examples\" |\n| No output format | Letting the model guess desired format | Specify JSON schemas, templates, or structures |\n| Assuming knowledge | Expecting the model to know domain-specific information | Provide necessary context explicitly |\n\n### 4.3 Tool Usage Anti-Patterns\n\n| Anti-Pattern | Description | Solution |\n|--------------|-------------|----------|\n| Untyped inputs | No schema definition for tool parameters | Use JSON Schema for parameter definitions |\n| Uninformative outputs | Tool returns data the model can't interpret | Return structured, parseable data |\n| Silent failures | Tools fail without actionable error messages | Provide diagnostic information in errors |\n\n---\n\n## 5. Practical Recommendations for Agent Developers\n\n### 5.1 Getting Started\n\n1. **Define Clear Success Criteria**: Before building, know what \"done\" looks like. What specific outcomes indicate success?\n\n2. **Start with a Single Tool**: Begin with one well-designed tool that does one thing excellently. Validate performance before adding complexity.\n\n3. **Implement Early Exit Conditions**: Set maximum iteration limits, progress checkpoints, and timeout conditions from day one.\n\n### 5.2 Context Optimization Checklist\n\n- [ ] Is all critical information at the beginning or end of the context?\n- [ ] Is the context focused on high-signal, relevant content?\n- [ ] Are system prompts and tool descriptions cached?\n- [ ] Is the formatting consistent and structured?\n- [ ] Are exit conditions clearly defined?\n- [ ] Is error handling designed for recovery, not just prevention?\n\n### 5.3 Error Handling Design\n\n1. **Retry Logic**: Give explicit permission for retry attempts in your system prompt\n2. **Diagnostic Messages**: Error messages should explain what went wrong and suggest next steps\n3. **Comprehensive Logging**: Log inputs, outputs, and reasoning traces for debugging\n4. **Graceful Degradation**: Design fallback behaviors when tools fail or context limits are reached\n\n### 5.4 Debugging Strategies\n\n**Trace Analysis**\nThe most powerful debugging technique is analyzing the full execution trace:\n\n1. Capture the complete reasoning trace including thinking blocks\n2. Identify where the agent's understanding diverged from reality\n3. Look for patterns:\n   - Tool confusion: Agent misunderstands which tool to use\n   - Goal drift: Agent loses sight of the original objective\n   - Context loss: Agent forgets earlier information\n4. Iterate on prompts based on specific failure modes\n\n**Observability Tools**\n- **LangSmith**: Visual tracing, latency breakdown, token usage tracking, failure analysis\n- **Weights & Biases Prompts**: Chain visualization, output comparison, failure pattern identification\n\n### 5.5 Systematic Testing\n\n1. **Define Comprehensive Test Cases**: Cover edge cases, typical scenarios, and failure modes\n2. **Measure Against Gold Standards**: Compare outputs against expected answers\n3. **Track Metrics Over Iterations**: Monitor prompt effectiveness over time\n4. **Test Incrementally**: Validate each addition before adding complexity\n\n---\n\n## 6. Emerging Considerations\n\n### 6.1 Interleaved Thinking Models\n\nNewer model architectures (e.g., MiniMax M2.1) support interleaved thinking\u2014the ability for models to reason between tool calls. This provides:\n- Better debugging visibility\n- Improved adaptability in agentic workflows\n- Enhanced ability to recover from errors\n\n### 6.2 Long-Context Optimization\n\nAs context windows continue to grow, new techniques emerge:\n- Hierarchical context management (summarize, then detail)\n- Context compression algorithms\n- Intelligent context selection based on task type\n\n### 6.3 Multi-Agent Coordination\n\nWhen multiple agents collaborate, context engineering becomes more complex:\n- Shared context vs. agent-specific context\n- Communication protocols between agents\n- Consistency and coordination mechanisms\n\n---\n\n## 7. References and Sources\n\n1. **Anthropic Research** - \"Building Effective Agents\"\n   - URL: https://www.anthropic.com/research/building-effective-agents\n\n2. **Anthropic Documentation** - \"Prompt Caching\"\n   - URL: https://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/build-with-claude/prompt-caching\n\n3. **Liu et al. (2023)** - \"Lost in the Middle: How Language Models Use Long Contexts\"\n   - URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.03172\n   - Published: arXiv, July 2023\n\n4. **OpenAI** - \"Prompt Engineering Best Practices\"\n   - URL: https://platform.openai.com/docs/guides/prompt-engineering\n\n5. **DAIR.AI** - \"Prompt Engineering Guide\"\n   - URL: https://www.promptingguide.ai/techniques\n\n6. **LangChain Documentation** - \"Debugging AI Agents\"\n   - URL: https://python.langchain.com/docs/how_to/debugging\n\n---\n\n## 8. Conclusion\n\nContext engineering represents a critical evolution in building effective AI agents. The key insights from current research can be summarized as:\n\n1. **Position Matters**: Critical information must be placed at attention anchors (beginning/end of context) due to the \"lost in the middle\" phenomenon.\n\n2. **Quality Over Quantity**: More context isn't better\u2014focus on high-signal, relevant information.\n\n3. **Start Simple**: Begin with minimal, well-designed components and add complexity only when evidence shows need.\n\n4. **Design for Recovery**: Build error handling and debugging capabilities from the start.\n\n5. **Iterate Systematically**: Test changes rigorously and track metrics over time.\n\nBy applying these principles, developers can build more reliable, efficient, and scalable AI agent systems.\n\n---\n\n*Report generated through systematic research of current literature and best practices. Last updated: 2024.*\n", "path": "./output/research_summary.md"})
+  Result: {"path": "./output/research_summary.md", "status": "success", "message": "Successfully wrote 14390 c...
+
+[Turn 9] Thinking:
+----------------------------------------
+I've completed the research and created a comprehensive summary. Let me provide a summary of what was accomplished.
+
+============================================================
+FINAL RESPONSE
+============================================================
+I've completed the research on context engineering for AI agents. Here's a summary of what was accomplished:
+
+## Research Completed
+
+### Sources Consulted
+1. **Anthropic Research** - "Building Effective Agents" - [URL](https://www.anthropic.com/research/building-effective-agents)
+2. **Anthropic Documentation** - "Prompt Caching" - [URL](https://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/build-with-claude/prompt-caching)
+3. **Liu et al. (2023)** - "Lost in the Middle" paper - [URL](https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.03172)
+4. **OpenAI** - "Prompt Engineering Best Practices" - [URL](https://platform.openai.com/docs/guides/prompt-engineering)
+5. **DAIR.AI** - "Prompt Engineering Guide" - [URL](https://www.promptingguide.ai/techniques)
+6. **LangChain** - "Debugging AI Agents" - [URL](https://python.langchain.com/docs/how_to/debugging)
+
+### Key Findings
+
+| Topic | Key Insight |
+|-------|-------------|
+| **"Lost in the Middle"** | LLMs show U-shaped performance - best at beginning/end, worst in middle of context |
+| **Core Principle** | Start simple, add complexity gradually; context is precious resource |
+| **Prompt Caching** | Can reduce latency by up to 85% for stable content |
+| **Tool Design** | Clear descriptions + typed inputs + informative outputs = reliable agents |
+| **Error Handling** | Design for recovery with explicit retry permissions and diagnostic messages |
+
+### Deliverables Created
+
+1. **Research Notes Saved** (3 notes):
+   - Context Engineering - Key Concepts
+   - Context Engineering - Best Practices  
+   - Context Engineering - Practical Recommendations
+
+2. **Final Report**: `./output/research_summary.md` (14,390 characters)
+   - Executive summary
+   - Key concepts and definitions
+   - Detailed coverage of the "lost in the middle" problem
+   - Best practices and techniques
+   - Anti-patterns to avoid
+   - Practical recommendations
+   - References to all sources

package/dist-docs/Agent-Skills-for-Context-Engineering/examples/interleaved_thinking/optimization_artifacts/iteration_10/analysis.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,47 @@
+============================================================
+REASONING TRACE ANALYSIS REPORT
+============================================================
+
+Overall Score: 70/100
+
+Scores:
+  - Reasoning Clarity: 80/100
+  - Goal Adherence: 85/100
+  - Tool Usage Quality: 70/100
+  - Error Recovery: 45/100
+
+Detected Patterns:
+
+  [MEDIUM] incomplete_reasoning
+    The agent reaches conclusions and writes comprehensive reports without explicitly validating key details in the thinking trace. For example, the agent writes specific context window sizes in the final report but doesn't show in thinking blocks where these specific numbers (GPT-4o: 128K, Claude: 200K) were sourced from the tool results.
+    Suggestion: Add explicit source tracking in thinking blocks - when gathering specific facts like model specifications, explicitly note 'I found X from source Y' to ensure traceability and validation.
+
+  [MEDIUM] missing_validation
+    When a tool call fails (context-windows URL returns error), the agent doesn't attempt recovery or note this as an information gap. Additionally, RAG chunk size recommendations (256-512 tokens) are written without showing how these specific values were determined or validated.
+    Suggestion: Implement explicit error recovery: when a tool fails, note what information is missing and either try alternative sources or flag for follow-up. For specific technical claims, explicitly cite the source in thinking blocks.
+
+  [LOW] tool_misuse
+    The agent makes several overlapping web searches that could have been more efficient. For example, searches at Turn 5 and Turn 6 both target RAG-related topics with similar parameters, suggesting some redundancy.
+    Suggestion: Before starting new searches, review what information has already been gathered and explicitly note gaps. Use more specific queries rather than broad overlapping ones.
+
+Strengths:
+  + Maintained clear tracking of the research goal throughout all 9 turns
+  + Good parallel execution of independent tasks (search + directory check in Turn 1)
+  + Effective source diversification - consulted academic papers, vendor documentation, and community resources
+  + Appropriate progressive deepening of research (starting broad, then narrowing to specific topics)
+  + Saved intermediate research notes before writing final summary, showing good workflow organization
+  + Final report is comprehensive with proper citation structure and covers all required elements
+
+Weaknesses:
+  - Failed to recover when one URL read failed (context-windows docs) - no fallback strategy or gap acknowledgment
+  - Thinking trace doesn't explicitly link facts to sources for key claims in the final report
+  - Some redundant search queries suggesting incomplete tracking of already-gathered information
+  - No explicit validation or cross-checking of information from different sources
+  - RAG best practices written with specific numbers but thinking trace doesn't show where these came from
+
+Recommendations:
+  1. Add a 'source citation' field to thinking blocks when gathering facts - explicitly note 'Fact X from source URL Y' to ensure traceability
+  2. Implement explicit error recovery protocols: when a tool fails, the thinking should immediately include 'Fallback strategy:' or 'Gap identified:' with next steps
+  3. Before writing the final report, add a validation step in thinking that reviews: 'Did I cite sources for all specific claims? Are there any unsupported assertions?'
+  4. Track gathered information in a structured way during research to avoid redundant searches and identify gaps more clearly
+  5. When writing technical recommendations with specific values (like RAG chunk sizes), explicitly reference the source in the thinking block, not just the final report

package/dist-docs/Agent-Skills-for-Context-Engineering/examples/interleaved_thinking/optimization_artifacts/iteration_10/trace.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,162 @@
+Session: e9508c77-db61-48bf-b084-e34c6fd28c4e
+Task: Research the topic of "context engineering for AI agents" and create a comprehensive summary.
+
+Your research should:
+1. Search for information about context engineering concepts and best practices
+2. Read relevant sources to gather detailed information
+3. Check the local project files for any existing research notes
+4. Save important findings as notes for future reference
+5. Write a final summary report to ./output/research_summary.md
+
+The summary should include:
+- Key concepts and definitions
+- Best practices and techniques (including the "lost in the middle" problem)
+- Practical recommendations for agent developers
+- References to sources consulted (use actual URLs from your research)
+Model: MiniMax-M2.1
+Status: Success
+Turns: 9
+Tokens: 5268
+
+============================================================
+REASONING TRACE
+============================================================
+
+[Turn 0] Thinking:
+----------------------------------------
+The user wants me to research "context engineering for AI agents" and create a comprehensive summary. Let me break this down into steps:
+
+1. First, search the web for information about context engineering for AI agents
+2. Read relevant sources to gather detailed information
+3. Check local project files for any existing research notes
+4. Save important findings as notes
+5. Write a final summary report to ./output/research_summary.md
+
+Let me start by searching the web and checking local files in p...
+
+  Tool: web_search({"num_results": 10, "query": "context engineering for AI agents best practices techniques"})
+  Result: {"query": "context engineering for ai agents best practices techniques", "num_results": 10, "results...
+
+  Tool: list_directory({"path": "."})
+  Result: {"path": ".", "entries": [{"name": "README.md", "type": "file"}, {"name": "research", "type": "direc...
+
+[Turn 1] Thinking:
+----------------------------------------
+Good, I have search results and I can see there's a "research" directory. Let me check what's in the research directory and also do another more specific search about context engineering.
+
+  Tool: list_directory({"path": "./research"})
+  Result: {"path": "./research", "entries": [], "message": "Directory is empty or does not exist"}
+
+  Tool: web_search({"num_results": 10, "query": "\"context engineering\" AI agents \"lost in the middle\" problem"})
+  Result: {"query": "\"context engineering\" ai agents \"lost in the middle\" problem", "num_results": 5, "res...
+
+[Turn 2] Thinking:
+----------------------------------------
+The research directory appears to be empty. Let me do more specific searches and read some of the key sources to get comprehensive information about context engineering for AI agents. I should also search for more specific topics like the "lost in the middle" problem.
+
+  Tool: web_search({"num_results": 8, "query": "context window management LLM agents retrieval augmented generation RAG"})
+  Result: {"query": "context window management llm agents retrieval augmented generation rag", "num_results": ...
+
+  Tool: web_search({"num_results": 8, "query": "long context LLM attention mechanism information retrieval"})
+  Result: {"query": "long context llm attention mechanism information retrieval", "num_results": 5, "results":...
+
+[Turn 3] Thinking:
+----------------------------------------
+I found a key paper "Lost in the Middle: How Language Models Use Long Contexts" from arxiv. Let me read some of the key sources to get more detailed information. I should read:
+1. Anthropic's Building Effective Agents research
+2. The "Lost in the Middle" paper
+3. Claude's context window documentation
+4. OpenAI's context documentation
+
+  Tool: read_url({"url": "https://www.anthropic.com/research/building-effective-agents"})
+  Result: {"url": "https://www.anthropic.com/research/building-effective-agents", "status": "success", "conten...
+
+  Tool: read_url({"url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.03172"})
+  Result: {"url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.03172", "status": "success", "content": "\n# Lost in the Middle:...
+
+  Tool: read_url({"url": "https://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/build-with-claude/context-windows"})
+  Result: {"url": "https://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/build-with-claude/context-windows", "status": "error", "...
+
+[Turn 4] Thinking:
+----------------------------------------
+Good, I got good information from Anthropic and the "Lost in the Middle" paper. Let me read a few more sources to get more comprehensive information.
+
+  Tool: read_url({"url": "https://platform.openai.com/docs/guides/text-generation"})
+  Result: {"url": "https://platform.openai.com/docs/guides/text-generation", "status": "success", "content": "...
+
+  Tool: read_url({"url": "https://www.promptingguide.ai/techniques"})
+  Result: {"url": "https://www.promptingguide.ai/techniques", "status": "success", "content": "\n# Prompt Engi...
+
+  Tool: read_url({"url": "https://platform.openai.com/docs/guides/prompt-engineering"})
+  Result: {"url": "https://platform.openai.com/docs/guides/prompt-engineering", "status": "success", "content"...
+
+[Turn 5] Thinking:
+----------------------------------------
+Now I have good information. Let me search for more specific information about context engineering patterns and RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation) best practices.
+
+  Tool: web_search({"num_results": 8, "query": "RAG retrieval augmented generation context chunking best practices 2024"})
+  Result: {"query": "rag retrieval augmented generation context chunking best practices 2024", "num_results": ...
+
+  Tool: web_search({"num_results": 8, "query": "system prompt design context management multi-turn conversation"})
+  Result: {"query": "system prompt design context management multi-turn conversation", "num_results": 7, "resu...
+
+[Turn 6] Thinking:
+----------------------------------------
+Let me read a few more sources to get additional context about RAG and debugging agents.
+
+  Tool: read_url({"url": "https://python.langchain.com/docs/how_to/debugging"})
+  Result: {"url": "https://python.langchain.com/docs/how_to/debugging", "status": "success", "content": "\n# D...
+
+  Tool: read_url({"url": "https://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/build-with-claude/prompt-caching"})
+  Result: {"url": "https://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/build-with-claude/prompt-caching", "status": "success", ...
+
+[Turn 7] Thinking:
+----------------------------------------
+Excellent! Now I have comprehensive information. Let me save some research notes and then write the final summary report.
+
+  Tool: save_note({"content": "# Key Findings: Context Engineering for AI Agents\n\n## Core Concepts\n- Context is the most precious resource in AI agent development\n- Effective context management balances token efficiency, information density, and attention optimization\n- The \"lost in the middle\" phenomenon is a fundamental limitation of current LLM architectures\n\n## The \"Lost in the Middle\" Problem\nResearch by Liu et al. (2023) shows LLMs exhibit U-shaped performance:\n- Information at the beginning: High performance (primacy effect)\n- Information in the middle: Significantly degraded performance  \n- Information at the end: High performance (recency effect)\n\nThis affects all model sizes and has critical implications for RAG and context design.\n\n## Best Practices Identified\n1. **Strategic Positioning**: Place critical information at start or end of context\n2. **Progressive Disclosure**: Load information on-demand, not all at once\n3. **Summarization**: Compress long histories while preserving key facts\n4. **Structured Formatting**: Use consistent formatting for easier parsing\n5. **Prompt Caching**: Cache static content to reduce latency and costs\n\n## Agent Design Principles\n- Start simple, add complexity gradually\n- Well-designed tools with clear descriptions and typed inputs\n- Explicit error handling and retry mechanisms\n- Clear exit conditions to prevent infinite loops", "tags": ["context-engineering", "ai-agents", "best-practices", "lost-in-the-middle"], "title": "Context Engineering Research - Key Findings"})
+  Result: {"status": "success", "note_id": 20, "message": "Note 'Context Engineering Research - Key Findings' ...
+
+  Tool: save_note({"content": "# Context Management Strategies for AI Agents\n\n## Token Efficiency\n- Every token costs money and attention\n- Use tiktoken to count tokens before sending requests\n- Consider summarization for long conversations\n\n## Context Structure Best Practices\n1. System message: Role and general instructions\n2. Context: Background information needed\n3. Task: Specific request with format requirements\n4. Examples: Few-shot demonstrations if helpful\n\n## Multi-Turn Conversation Management\n- Truncation: Remove oldest messages when approaching limit\n- Summarization: Replace old messages with summaries\n- Retrieval: Use RAG to fetch only relevant content\n\n## RAG System Design\n- Limit retrieved chunks (quality over quantity)\n- Position most relevant chunks at boundaries\n- Rank by relevance, not just similarity\n- Consider summarization to preserve key information density\n\n## Debugging Context Issues\n- Enable verbose mode for detailed logging\n- Use tracing tools (LangSmith, W&B)\n- Look for patterns: tool confusion, goal drift, context loss\n- Implement progress checks and early stopping conditions", "tags": ["context-management", "token-efficiency", "RAG", "debugging"], "title": "Context Management Strategies"})
+  Result: {"status": "success", "note_id": 21, "message": "Note 'Context Management Strategies' saved successf...
+
+[Turn 8] Thinking:
+----------------------------------------
+Great, I saved the research notes. Now let me write the comprehensive summary report to ./output/research_summary.md
+
+  Tool: write_file({"content": "# Context Engineering for AI Agents: A Comprehensive Summary\n\n## Executive Summary\n\nContext engineering is the deliberate design and management of information provided to AI agents to optimize their performance, reliability, and efficiency. As AI agents become more sophisticated, the strategic organization of context\u2014including system prompts, tool definitions, retrieved information, and conversation history\u2014has emerged as a critical discipline in building effective AI applications. This report synthesizes current research and best practices for context engineering, with particular attention to the \"lost in the middle\" phenomenon and practical recommendations for agent developers.\n\n---\n\n## 1. Introduction to Context Engineering\n\n### 1.1 What is Context Engineering?\n\nContext engineering refers to the systematic approach of designing, structuring, and managing the contextual information provided to large language models (LLMs) in AI agent systems. Unlike traditional prompt engineering\u2014which focuses on crafting individual prompts\u2014context engineering encompasses the holistic management of all information an agent can access, including:\n\n- **System prompts**: Role definitions, behavioral guidelines, and core instructions\n- **Tool descriptions**: Definitions of available actions and their parameters\n- **Retrieved information**: Knowledge fetched from external sources via RAG\n- **Conversation history**: Previous messages and interactions\n- **Few-shot examples**: Demonstrations of desired behavior\n- **Static reference material**: Documentation or data that remains consistent across requests\n\nThe goal of context engineering is to maximize the effective use of the model's limited context window while minimizing costs, latency, and the risk of information being overlooked or forgotten.\n\n### 1.2 Why Context Engineering Matters\n\nModern LLMs support increasingly large context windows\u2014up to 200K tokens for models like Claude and 128K for GPT-4o. However, research demonstrates that simply providing more context does not guarantee better performance. The \"lost in the middle\" phenomenon, documented by Liu et al. (2023), reveals that LLMs struggle to effectively utilize information placed in the middle of long contexts.\n\nThis limitation has profound implications for AI agent development:\n\n- **Cost implications**: Larger contexts consume more tokens and increase API costs\n- **Performance implications**: Poorly structured context can degrade agent performance\n- **Reliability implications**: Agents may miss critical information or instructions\n- **User experience implications**: Inconsistent or unpredictable agent behavior\n\n---\n\n## 2. Key Concepts and Definitions\n\n### 2.1 Context Window\n\nThe context window is the maximum number of tokens an LLM can process in a single request. Current context window capacities vary by model:\n\n| Model | Context Window |\n|-------|----------------|\n| GPT-4o | 128K tokens |\n| GPT-4 Turbo | 128K tokens |\n| Claude (max) | 200K tokens |\n| GPT-3.5 Turbo | 16K tokens |\n\nUnderstanding context window limits is essential for effective context engineering, as exceeding these limits requires truncation, summarization, or retrieval strategies.\n\n### 2.2 Token\n\nA token is the basic unit of text processing for LLMs, typically representing roughly 4 characters of English text. Tokens can be words, parts of words, or punctuation marks. Context engineering requires careful token management to balance information density against costs and attention limitations.\n\n### 2.3 System Prompt\n\nThe system prompt establishes the agent's role, personality, behavioral guidelines, and core constraints. In many LLM APIs, the system prompt is treated specially and does not count toward user message limits in some pricing models.\n\n### 2.4 Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG)\n\nRAG is a pattern where agents retrieve relevant information from external knowledge bases before generating responses. This allows agents to access up-to-date information and domain-specific knowledge without exceeding context limits.\n\n### 2.5 Prompt Caching\n\nPrompt caching is an optimization feature that stores the results of processing static prompt content (system prompts, tool definitions, examples) for reuse across multiple requests. This can reduce latency by up to 85% and lower costs by avoiding redundant processing of identical content.\n\n---\n\n## 3. The \"Lost in the Middle\" Phenomenon\n\n### 3.1 Research Findings\n\nThe landmark paper \"Lost in the Middle: How Language Models Use Long Contexts\" (Liu et al., 2023) revealed a critical limitation in how LLMs process long contexts. The research found that LLMs exhibit a **U-shaped performance curve** when processing information at different positions in a long context:\n\n```\nPerformance\n    \u2191\n    \u2502     \u256d\u2500\u2500\u2500\u256e\n    \u2502    \u2571     \u2572     \u2190 Middle: Degraded performance\n    \u2502   \u2571       \u2572\n    \u2502\u2500\u2500\u2571         \u2572\u2500\u2500\u2500  \u2190 Beginning/End: High performance\n    \u2502\n    \u2514\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2192 Context Position\n      Beginning  End\n```\n\n**Key findings:**\n\n1. **Position matters**: Models perform significantly worse when relevant information is placed in the middle of long contexts compared to the beginning or end\n2. **Length degrades performance**: Even at optimal positions, performance decreases as total context length increases\n3. **Model size doesn't fix it**: Larger models exhibit the same pattern, indicating this is a fundamental architectural limitation\n\n### 3.2 Implications for Context Engineering\n\nThe \"lost in the middle\" phenomenon directly impacts how developers should structure context:\n\n- **Critical instructions** should be placed at the very beginning or end of prompts\n- **Important retrieved content** should be positioned at context boundaries\n- **Less important information** can be placed in the middle if necessary\n- **Structure matters**: Using clear section headers and formatting helps models parse information\n\n### 3.3 Mitigating Strategies\n\nBased on the research, practitioners should:\n\n1. **Front-load critical information**: Place the most important instructions and context near the boundaries\n2. **Limit context length**: Only include truly necessary information\n3. **Use clear structure**: Employ headers, formatting, and organization to help models locate information\n4. **Test positioning**: Experiment with different arrangements of critical information\n\n---\n\n## 4. Best Practices and Techniques\n\n### 4.1 Core Principles for Effective Context Engineering\n\n#### Start Simple, Add Complexity Gradually\n\nBegin with the simplest possible agent architecture:\n- Single tool with clear purpose\n- Linear workflow without branching\n- Explicit success criteria\n- Add complexity only when evidence shows it's needed\n\n#### Treat Context as a Precious Resource\n\nEvery token costs money and attention. Effective context engineering means:\n- Only including truly relevant information\n- Removing redundant or low-signal content\n- Using compression techniques like summarization\n- Implementing progressive disclosure (load information on-demand)\n\n#### Design for Structured Format\n\nConsistent formatting makes context easier for models to parse and interpret:\n- Use clear section headers (e.g., \"## Instructions\", \"## Context\", \"## Task\")\n- Maintain consistent formatting patterns\n- Separate distinct topics with clear boundaries\n- Use delimiters to mark distinct sections\n\n### 4.2 System Prompt Design\n\nThe system prompt is the foundation of agent behavior. Best practices include:\n\n1. **Be specific**: Include detailed instructions about role, capabilities, and constraints\n2. **Define persona**: Ask the model to adopt a specific perspective or expertise\n3. **Specify output format**: Define exactly how responses should be structured\n4. **Include constraints**: List boundaries and requirements explicitly\n5. **Add examples**: Include few-shot demonstrations of desired behavior\n\n**Example structure:**\n```\n## Role\nYou are a helpful research assistant specializing in scientific literature review.\n\n## Capabilities\n- Search academic databases\n- Summarize research findings\n- Compare methodologies across studies\n- Cite sources using APA format\n\n## Constraints\n- Only access peer-reviewed sources\n- Do not fabricate citations\n- Acknowledge uncertainty when present\n\n## Output Format\nProvide summaries with:\n1. Key findings\n2. Methodology notes\n3. Limitations\n4. Relevance to query\n```\n\n### 4.3 Tool Design\n\nWell-designed tools make agents more reliable:\n\n- **Clear descriptions**: Explain what the tool does AND when to use it\n- **Typed inputs**: Use JSON Schema or similar to define expected parameters\n- **Informative outputs**: Return data the model can interpret and act on\n- **Error messages**: Provide actionable guidance when tools fail\n\n### 4.4 Context Management for Multi-Turn Conversations\n\nFor long conversations, implement these strategies:\n\n| Strategy | Description | Use Case |\n|----------|-------------|----------|\n| **Truncation** | Remove oldest messages when approaching the limit | Simple conversations with recent context most important |\n| **Summarization** | Replace old messages with condensed summaries | When historical context matters but can be compressed |\n| **Retrieval** | Use RAG to fetch relevant history | When specific past information needs to be recalled |\n| **Hybrid** | Combine truncation, summarization, and retrieval | Complex conversations with varied context needs |\n\n### 4.5 RAG System Design\n\nEffective retrieval augmented generation requires attention to:\n\n1. **Chunk size**: Balance between sufficient context and focused retrieval (typically 256-512 tokens)\n2. **Chunk positioning**: Place most relevant chunks at context boundaries\n3. **Ranking strategy**: Rank by relevance, not just semantic similarity\n4. **Quality over quantity**: Fewer highly relevant chunks outperform many marginal ones\n5. **Summarization**: Condense multiple sources while preserving key information\n\n### 4.6 Prompt Caching Optimization\n\nMaximize the benefits of prompt caching:\n\n1. **Cache stable content**: System prompts, tool descriptions, and examples that don't change\n2. **Place dynamic content last**: User queries and variable data after cached content\n3. **Meet minimum size**: Content must typically be at least 1024 tokens to be cached\n4. **Monitor cache hits**: Track efficiency through API response headers\n\n### 4.7 Advanced Techniques\n\n#### Chain-of-Thought (CoT) Prompting\n\nEncourage step-by-step reasoning to improve complex task performance:\n```\nSolve this problem step by step:\n1. First, identify the key information\n2. Next, plan the approach\n3. Then, execute each step\n4. Finally, verify the answer\n```\n\n#### Self-Consistency\n\nGenerate multiple reasoning paths and take the majority answer for improved reliability on complex tasks.\n\n#### Structured Output Specifications\n\nDefine exact output formats using:\n- JSON Schema for structured data\n- Markdown headers for document sections\n- Explicit field names and types\n- Examples of correct output format\n\n---\n\n## 5. Practical Recommendations for Agent Developers\n\n### 5.1 Design Phase Recommendations\n\n1. **Define clear success criteria** before building\n2. **Map all context sources** your agent will need\n3. **Identify what changes** vs. what remains static\n4. **Plan context structure** before writing prompts\n5. **Design for debugging** with tracing and logging\n\n### 5.2 Implementation Phase Recommendations\n\n1. **Start with minimal context** and add incrementally\n2. **Test with representative examples** early\n3. **Monitor token usage** and costs\n4. **Implement cache breakpoints** for static content\n5. **Add explicit error handling** and retry logic\n\n### 5.3 Testing and Iteration\n\n1. **Test information retrieval** at different context positions\n2. **Verify critical instructions** are not lost in long contexts\n3. **Measure performance degradation** as context grows\n4. **Collect failure patterns** and iterate on prompts\n5. **Use A/B testing** to compare context strategies\n\n### 5.4 Production Deployment\n\n1. **Implement progress checks** and early stopping conditions\n2. **Set max iteration limits** to prevent infinite loops\n3. **Log everything** for debugging and improvement\n4. **Monitor cache hit rates** for cost optimization\n5. **Set up alerting** for context-related failures\n\n### 5.5 Common Anti-Patterns to Avoid\n\n| Anti-Pattern | Problem | Solution |\n|--------------|---------|----------|\n| Over-engineering | Building complex multi-agent systems before validating single-agent performance | Start simple, add complexity gradually |\n| Vague tool descriptions | Unclear when to use each tool | Provide specific usage criteria |\n| Context stuffing | Including too much irrelevant information | Curate only necessary context |\n| No exit conditions | Agents run indefinitely | Set clear stopping criteria |\n| Assuming knowledge | Agent doesn't know your specific domain | Provide explicit domain context |\n| Ambiguous instructions | \"Make it better\" vs. specific improvement requests | Be explicit about requirements |\n\n---\n\n## 6. Debugging and Observability\n\n### 6.1 Debugging Strategies\n\nEffective debugging requires visibility into agent reasoning:\n\n1. **Enable verbose logging** to capture all steps and inputs/outputs\n2. **Use tracing platforms** (LangSmith, Weights & Biases) for production debugging\n3. **Capture full reasoning traces** including thinking blocks\n4. **Identify divergence points** where agent understanding differs from reality\n5. **Look for patterns**: tool confusion, goal drift, context loss\n\n### 6.2 Common Context-Related Issues\n\n| Issue | Symptoms | Debugging Approach |\n|-------|----------|-------------------|\n| Context loss | Agent forgets earlier information | Check context window limits, implement summarization |\n| Tool confusion | Wrong tool selected | Review tool descriptions, simplify tool set |\n| Goal drift | Agent pursues wrong objective | Add explicit goal reminders |\n| Infinite loops | Agent repeats same action | Add max_iterations, progress checks |\n| Hallucination | Agent makes up information | Require citations, use temperature=0 |\n\n### 6.3 Observability Best Practices\n\n- **Track token usage** per request and over time\n- **Monitor cache hit rates** for optimization\n- **Measure latency** for cached vs. uncached requests\n- **Log context structure** for debugging failures\n- **Alert on unusual patterns** in agent behavior\n\n---\n\n## 7. Future Considerations\n\nAs context windows continue to grow and models become more sophisticated, context engineering will evolve:\n\n1. **Larger context windows** will enable more ambitious agent architectures\n2. **Better attention mechanisms** may reduce the \"lost in the middle\" effect\n3. **Improved caching** will further reduce costs and latency\n4. **More sophisticated retrieval** will enable better knowledge integration\n5. **Standardized context formats** may emerge for agent interoperability\n\n---\n\n## 8. Conclusion\n\nContext engineering is a foundational discipline for building effective AI agents. The key insights from current research are:\n\n1. **Position matters**: Place critical information at the beginning or end of context to avoid the \"lost in the middle\" phenomenon\n2. **Quality over quantity**: Fewer, more relevant context outperforms more context with lower signal\n3. **Structure helps**: Clear formatting and organization improve model performance\n4. **Manage iteratively**: Start simple, add complexity based on evidence\n5. **Design for failure**: Implement error handling, debugging, and observability from the start\n\nBy applying these principles, developers can build more reliable, efficient, and effective AI agents that make better use of the context available to them.\n\n---\n\n## References\n\n1. Liu, N. F., et al. (2023). Lost in the Middle: How Language Models Use Long Contexts. arXiv:2307.03172. https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.03172\n\n2. Anthropic. Building Effective AI Agents. https://www.anthropic.com/research/building-effective-agents\n\n3. Anthropic. Prompt Caching Documentation. https://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/build-with-claude/prompt-caching\n\n4. OpenAI. Text Generation Documentation. https://platform.openai.com/docs/guides/text-generation\n\n5. OpenAI. Prompt Engineering Best Practices. https://platform.openai.com/docs/guides/prompt-engineering\n\n6. DAIR.AI. Prompt Engineering Guide. https://www.promptingguide.ai/techniques\n\n7. LangChain. Debugging AI Agents. https://python.langchain.com/docs/how_to/debugging\n\n---\n\n*Report generated through comprehensive research of current literature, documentation, and best practices in context engineering for AI agents.*\n", "path": "./output/research_summary.md"})
+  Result: {"path": "./output/research_summary.md", "status": "success", "message": "Successfully wrote 16581 c...
+
+[Turn 9] Thinking:
+----------------------------------------
+I've completed the research task. Let me provide a summary to the user.
+
+============================================================
+FINAL RESPONSE
+============================================================
+I've completed the comprehensive research on context engineering for AI agents. Here's a summary of what was accomplished:
+
+## Research Completed
+
+### Sources Consulted
+- **Anthropic Research**: "Building Effective Agents" - Core principles for agent design
+- **arXiv Paper**: "Lost in the Middle: How Language Models Use Long Contexts" (Liu et al., 2023) - Key research on context attention limitations
+- **Anthropic Documentation**: Prompt caching optimization
+- **OpenAI Documentation**: Context windows and prompt engineering best practices
+- **Prompting Guide (DAIR.AI)**: Advanced prompting techniques
+- **LangChain Documentation**: Debugging strategies for agents
+
+### Research Notes Saved
+1. **"Context Engineering Research - Key Findings"** - Core concepts and the "lost in the middle" phenomenon
+2. **"Context Management Strategies"** - Token efficiency, RAG design, and debugging approaches
+
+### Final Report Created
+**Location**: `./output/research_summary.md`
+
+The report includes:
+- **Key concepts**: Context windows, tokens, RAG, prompt caching
+- **The "Lost in the Middle" phenomenon**: U-shaped performance curve, position effects, mitigation strategies
+- **Best practices**: System prompt design, tool design, conversation management, RAG optimization
+- **Practical recommendations**: Design, implementation, testing, and deployment guidance
+- **Debugging strategies**: Common issues and observability practices
+- **References**: All sources with actual URLs

package/dist-docs/Agent-Skills-for-Context-Engineering/examples/interleaved_thinking/optimization_artifacts/iteration_2/analysis.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,48 @@
+============================================================
+REASONING TRACE ANALYSIS REPORT
+============================================================
+
+Overall Score: 66/100
+
+Scores:
+  - Reasoning Clarity: 80/100
+  - Goal Adherence: 90/100
+  - Tool Usage Quality: 55/100
+  - Error Recovery: 40/100
+
+Detected Patterns:
+
+  [HIGH] missing_validation
+    Agent failed to properly handle or acknowledge tool errors, particularly the failed URL fetch for Anthropic context windows documentation
+    Suggestion: Add explicit error handling for failed tool calls - when a read_url fails, the agent should acknowledge it and either retry, try an alternative source, or explicitly note that information is missing rather than proceeding as if it succeeded
+
+  [MEDIUM] tool_misuse
+    Agent did not verify or validate the relevance of search results before committing to reading sources
+    Suggestion: After receiving search results, explicitly evaluate and rank sources by relevance to the research question before deciding which URLs to read. This saves token costs and ensures better source quality.
+
+  [LOW] premature_conclusion
+    Agent prematurely declared having 'enough information' despite not yet completing all research phases
+    Suggestion: Before declaring research complete, create a checklist of what information is still needed and verify each item is adequately covered. Set explicit criteria for 'enough information' at task start.
+
+Strengths:
+  + Excellent structured planning at the start with clear breakdown of 5 task components
+  + Good parallel execution - intelligently ran independent tasks (searching + checking local files) simultaneously
+  + Maintained consistent focus on the original research goal throughout all 7 turns
+  + Produced a comprehensive, well-organized final report with proper source citations and URLs
+  + Showed progressive deepening of understanding through multiple research iterations
+  + Successfully saved research notes for future reference before writing final summary
+
+Weaknesses:
+  - Critical: Did not acknowledge or recover when read_url failed - the agent proceeded as if all sources were successfully retrieved
+  - Did not validate source quality or relevance before committing to read URLs
+  - Included references in final report (prompt caching) to sources never successfully read
+  - No cross-checking of information across multiple sources to verify consistency
+  - Did not systematically verify the output file was correctly written beyond basic existence check
+  - Lacked explicit error handling for edge cases throughout the workflow
+
+Recommendations:
+  1. Add explicit error handling patterns: When any tool call fails, the agent should explicitly acknowledge the failure, consider alternatives, and either retry with modified parameters or document what information is missing
+  2. Implement source validation step: After search results arrive, evaluate and rank sources by relevance before deciding which to read, documenting the selection rationale
+  3. Create a pre-completion checklist: Before writing final summary, verify each requirement from the original task has been addressed with specific evidence
+  4. Add cross-source validation: When gathering information from multiple sources, explicitly check for consistency and flag contradictions
+  5. Add verification for referenced content: Ensure that any sources cited in the final report were actually successfully retrieved and read