meta-context-watcherlisted

# Write the handover, then start clean A long session gets worse before it gets full. Accuracy falls from roughly 300-400k tokens on a 1M window and from about 50k on a 200k one, while Claude Code does not auto-compact until around 83% - and compaction DISCARDS working detail rather than preserving it. Both numbers are dated, and neither is measured here. The accuracy figures are Chroma's 2025 context-rot study, read second-hand from a summary rather than from the paper; the 83% is Claude Code product behaviour that can move in any release. Treat them as the order of magnitude that justifies handing over early, never as thresholds to tune against - and re-check both before quoting either as current. Between those two points is where a session should be handed over deliberately instead of truncated. ## The one rule **Write only what the next session cannot re-derive.** It inherits the repository, the git history, the CLAUDE.md cascade and the memory store. Only one thing dies with this session: what you were part-way through, and why you chose it. ## Two files, because they have opposite lifetimes `handover.md` describes ONE MOMENT and is replaced wholesale every time. `OPEN-WORK.md` is the STANDING BACKLOG and is only ever edited line by line. Keeping both in one file is what made the backlog rot. A handover is rewritten from what the writing session has in mind, so every item is re-encoded from memory once per session, and it is re-encoded in proportion to how recent