When to Clear an Agent's Context: A Measured U-Curve

Correction, 15 September 2026: the audio and the transcript below use the prices of report versions 1.0 and 1.1, which were wrong. At the correct prices, a run costs $2.17 when the context is cleared after every task, $1.62 at every third task and $1.78 when it is never cleared (not $2.68, $2.14 and $2.47). Clearing after every task costs 33.5% more than the best policy (not 25%). Never clearing costs 9.7% more (not 16%), and that difference is not statistically significant (p = 0.046; 0.14 after adjustment for multiple comparisons). A cache write costs 20 times a cache read, not twelve and a half. Corrected report: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22759217 Thirty-six runs, six session policies, and an answer that matches neither of the two popular rules Full transcript of this episode: arsentev.ai/podcast