Workflows

These are applications of the four levers in the optimization playbook. Nothing here is exotic — the value is in doing it the same way every time, so the expensive version never becomes the default.

The scoped coding session. One task per conversation. Open with the goal and the acceptance criterion. Paste only the functions involved, never whole files. Ask for diffs rather than full rewrites. When the task is done, close the thread — do not reuse it for the next ticket.

The research session. Gather in one conversation, write in another. Research threads accumulate large amounts of material you will never need again; once you have your conclusions, start fresh and paste the conclusions. If you are in an agentic surface, push exploration into a subagent so the reads stay out of your main context.

The long-document session. Do not attach the document and then ask twenty questions about it — that re-sends it twenty times. Extract the sections you need once, work from the extracts, and only return to the full document when the section genuinely changes.

The common thread: a conversation is a unit of work with a beginning and an end, not a place you live all day.