What is Context Window in Claude Code
The context window is Claude's memory capacity for a single conversation. It includes your messages, Claude's responses, file contents, and tool outputs. Performance degrades significantly when approaching limits, requiring strategic session management.
How to Manage It
Monitor Context Usage - Watch for performance degradation as conversations grow longer. Claude's response quality declines when approaching context limits.
Strategic Chunking - Break large tasks into smaller pieces that can be completed within optimal context bounds. Avoid the last fifth of the context window for memory-intensive tasks.
Memory Management - Complete related work in focused chunks rather than mixing different types of tasks in long conversations.
Why Manage Context Window
Context window awareness prevents performance degradation and ensures consistent results. I avoid running Claude to the limit because response quality declines significantly on tasks requiring broad codebase understanding.
I manage context window constraints by avoiding the last fifth for memory-intensive tasks and starting fresh sessions when approaching limits, rather than relying on automatic context management.
Large-scale refactoring, multi-component features, and architectural debugging require substantial working memory. Complete these tasks in focused sessions before context depletion.
Identify natural breakpoints in complex workflows. Complete individual components before integration, or finish research phases before implementation begins.
See Also: Context Window Depletion|Dynamic Memory|Context Window Constraints