Clearing
Ending the current session and starting a fresh one. The next message begins with an empty context.
Clearing is ending the current session and starting a fresh one. The next message begins with an empty session and an empty context window: the model sees only what the new session loads.
It is the bluntest of the context tools, and the most reliable. Nothing carries over, so nothing stale can confuse the model and no assumption made in the old session can leak into the new one. What you lose is everything that was only in the conversation: the reasoning you had done, the things you had worked out, the state of a half-finished task.
The rule of thumb is to clear between tasks, not within one. A new task deserves a clean context. A continuing task deserves compaction instead, because compaction keeps the decisions and drops the noise. Clearing in the middle of a task is how you lose the thread of what you were doing.
Related terms
Compaction
Summarising the old conversation so the new part fits in the window.
Session
One bounded run of work with an agent, from the first message to the end.
Context
The relevant information the agent has access to right now. A measure of quality, not quantity.
Stateless
Carries no information forward. The model is stateless across requests; an agent is stateless across sessions by default.
Handoff
Moving work from one session, or one agent, to another without losing the thread.
Want this working inside your team?
It starts with one conversation about your workflow.