Context Freshness
Agents quote last month's price with confidence.
Milk in the fridge. Check the date before you pour.
Visual Workflows
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Overview
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This turn
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Milk in the fridge. Check the date before you pour.
Key Takeaways
- 1.Stale facts in the pack are worse than missing facts.
- 2.TTL, updated_at, and source version belong on every memory and chunk.
- 3.Prefer a tool refresh over a three-week-old embedding.
- 4.Say when a fact might be stale.
- 5.Agents quote last month's price with confidence.
Real Example
Scenario
Freshness: pack only what this turn needs.
What you would do
In Context Engineering, apply Context Freshness to this scenario: Freshness: pack only what this turn needs. Identify the inputs, run the technique, validate the output, and note one thing you would monitor in production.
Commands
Commands to Remember
Stale facts in the pack are worse than missing factsTTL, updated_at, and source version belong on every memory and chunkPrefer a tool refresh over a three-week-old embeddingSay when a fact might be stale
Cheat Sheet
Quick recap
quick ref- •Freshness
- •Budget
- •Don't dump
Common Mistakes
- ✕Skipping evaluation for Context Freshness before production
- ✕No logging or tracing around context freshness steps
- ✕Ignoring cost and latency implications