Context Management

💡 Quick Reference

• Context = The information Cline knows about your project
• Context Window = How much information Cline can hold at once
• Use context files to maintain project knowledge
• Reset when the context window gets full

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Understanding Context & Context Windows

Think of working with Cline like collaborating with a thorough, proactive teammate:

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How Context is Built

Cline actively builds context in two ways:

1. Automatic Context Gathering (i.e. Cline-driven)
   • Proactively reads related files
   • Explores project structure
   • Analyzes patterns and relationships
   • Maps dependencies and imports
   • Asks clarifying questions
2. User-Guided Context
   • Share specific files
   • Provide documentation
   • Answer Cline’s questions
   • Guide focus areas
   • Share design thoughts and requirements

💡 Key Point: Cline isn’t passive - it actively seeks to understand your project. You can either let it explore or guide its focus, especially in Plan mode.

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Context & Context Windows

Think of context like a whiteboard you and Cline share:

• Context is all the information available:
  • What Cline has discovered
  • What you’ve shared
  • Your conversation history
  • Project requirements
  • Previous decisions
• Context Window is the size of the whiteboard itself:
  • Measured in tokens (1 token ≈ 3/4 of an English word)
  • Each model has a fixed size:
    • Claude 3.5 Sonnet: 200,000 tokens
    • DeepSeek: 64,000 tokens
  • When the whiteboard is full, you need to erase (clear context) to write more
    • How Cline manages context under the hood

⚠️ Important: Having a large context window (like Claude’s 200k tokens) doesn’t mean you should fill it completely. Just like a cluttered whiteboard, too much information can make it harder to focus on what’s important.

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Understanding the Context Window Progress Bar

Cline provides a visual way to monitor your context window usage through a progress bar:

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Reading the Bar

• ↑ shows input tokens (what you’ve sent to the LLM)
• ↓ shows output tokens (what the LLM has generated)
• The progress bar visualizes how much of your context window you’ve used
• The total shows your model’s maximum capacity (e.g., 200k for Claude 3.5-Sonnet)

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When to Watch the Bar

• During long coding sessions
• When working with multiple files
• Before starting complex tasks
• When Cline seems to lose context

💡 Tip: Consider starting a fresh session when usage reaches 70-80% to maintain optimal performance.

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Working with Context Files

Context files help maintain understanding across sessions. They serve as documentation specifically designed to help AI assistants understand your project.

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Approaches to Context Files

1. Evergreen Project Context (i.e. Memory Bank)

   • Living documentation that evolves with your project
   • Updated as architecture and patterns emerge
   • Example: The Memory Bank pattern maintains files like techContext.md and systemPatterns.md
   • Useful for long-running projects and teams

2. Task-Specific Context (i.e. Structured Approach)

   • Created for specific implementation tasks

   • Document requirements, constraints, and decisions

   • Example:

     # auth-system-implementation.md
     
     ## Requirements
     
     -   OAuth2 implementation
     -   Support for Google and GitHub
     -   Rate limiting on auth endpoints
     
     ## Technical Decisions
     
     -   Using Passport.js for provider integration
     -   JWT for session management
     -   Redis for rate limiting

3. Knowledge Transfer Docs

   • Switch to plan mode and ask Cline to document everything you’ve accomplished so far, along with the remaining steps, in a markdown file.
   • Copy the contents of the markdown file.
   • Start a new task using that content as context.

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Using Context Files Effectively

1. Structure and Format
   • Use clear, consistent organization
   • Include relevant examples
   • Link related concepts
   • Keep information focused
2. Maintenance
   • Update after significant changes
   • Version control your context files
   • Remove outdated information
   • Document key decisions

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Practical Tips

1. Starting New Projects
   • Let Cline explore the codebase
   • Answer its questions about structure and patterns
   • Consider setting up basic context files
   • Document key design decisions
2. Ongoing Development
   • Update context files with significant changes
   • Share relevant documentation
   • Use Plan mode for complex discussions
   • Start fresh sessions when needed
3. Team Projects
   • Share common context files (consider using .clinerules files in project roots)
   • Document architectural decisions
   • Maintain consistent patterns
   • Keep documentation current

Remember: The goal is to help Cline maintain consistent understanding of your project across sessions.