Your Agent Doesn't Run Out of Context. It Degrades at 79%

Short summary

Agents degrade at ~79% context occupancy, not 100%—step quality holds flat until 70% then bends down sharply. A deterministic handoff (summarize and checkpoint) at 70% occupancy improves long-running sessions from 31/50 to 50/50 success rate. The author provides a Python model showing step reliability falls from 97% at 50% occupancy to 61% at 95%.

• •Agent step quality degrades starting at ~79% context occupancy, well before 100% overflow
• •Deterministic checkpointing at 70% occupancy improves session reliability from 62% to 100%
• •Success probability drops linearly: 97% at 50% occupancy → 61% at 95% occupancy

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