letta-ai/Context Doctor

Context Doctor

Your context is what makes you you across sessions. You are responsible for managing it (along with memory subagents). It includes:

• Your system prompt and memories (contained in system/)
• Your external memory (contained in the memory filesystem)
• Your skills (procedural memory)

Over time, context can degrade — bloat and poor prompt quality erode your ability to remember the right things and follow instructions properly. This skill helps you identify issues with your context and repair them collaboratively with the user.

Operating Procedure

Step 1: Identify and resolve context issues

Explore your memory files to identify issues. Consider what is confusing about your own prompts and context, and resolve the issues.

Below are additional common issues with context and how they can be resolved:

Context quality

Your system prompt and memory filesystem should be well structured and clear.

Questions to ask:

• Is my system prompt clear and well formatted?
• Are there wasteful or unnecessary tokens in my prompts?
• Do I know when to load which files in my memory filesystem?

System prompt bloat

Memories that are compiled as part of the system prompt (contained in system/) should only take up about 10% of the total context size (usually ~15-20K tokens), though this is a recommendation, not a hard requirement.

Use the following script to evaluate the token usage of the system prompt:

npx tsx <SKILL_DIR>/scripts/estimate_system_tokens.ts --memory-dir "$MEMORY_DIR"

Where <SKILL_DIR> is the Skill Directory shown when the skill was loaded (visible in the injection header).

Questions to ask:

• Do all these tokens need to be passed to the LLM on every turn, or can they be retrieved when needed through being part of external memory or conversation history?
• Do any of these prompts confuse or distract me?
• Am I able to effectively follow critical instructions (e.g. persona information, user preferences) given the current prompt structure and contents?

Solution: Reduce the size of the system prompt if needed:

• Move files outside of system/ so they are no longer part of the system prompt
• Compact information to be more information dense or eliminate redundancy
• Leverage progressive disclosure: move some context outside of system/ and reference it via [[path]] links to create discovery paths

Scope: You may refine, tighten, and restructure prompts to improve clarity and adherence — but do not change the intended semantics. The goal is better signal, not different behavior.

• Do not alter persona-defining content (who you are, how you communicate)
• Do not remove or change user identity or preferences (e.g. the human's name, their stated goals)
• Do not rewrite instructions in ways that shift their meaning — only reduce noise and improve structure

Context redundancy and unclear organization

The context in the memory filesystem should have a clear structure, with a well-defined purpose for each file. Memory file descriptions should be precise and non-overlapping. Their contents should be consistent with the description, and have non-overlapping content to other files.

Questions to ask:

• Do the descriptions make clear what file is for what?
• Do the contents of the file match the descriptions? (you can ask subagents to check)

Solution: Read all memory files (use subagents for efficiency), then:

• Consolidate redundant files
• Reorganize files and rewrite descriptions to have clear separation of concerns
• Avoid duplication by referencing common files from multiple places (e.g. [[reference/api]])
• Rewrite unclear or low-quality content

Invalid context format

Files in the memory filesystem must follow certain structural requirements:

• Must have a system/persona.md
• Must NOT have overlapping file and folder names (e.g. system/human.md and system/human/identity.md)
• Must follow specification for skills (e.g. skills/{skill_name}/) with the format:

skill-name/
├── SKILL.md          # Required: metadata + instructions
├── scripts/          # Optional: executable code
├── references/       # Optional: documentation
├── assets/           # Optional: templates, resources
└── ...               # Any additional files or directories

Solution: Reorganize files to follow the required structure

Poor use of progressive disclosure

Only critical information should be in the system prompt, since it's passed on every turn. Use progressive disclosure so that context only sometimes needed can be dynamically retrieved.

Files that are outside of system/ are not part of the system prompt, and must be dynamically loaded. You must index your files to ensure your future self can discover them: for example, make sure that files have informative names and descriptions, or are referenced from parts of your system prompt via [[path]] links to create discovery paths. Otherwise, you will never discover the external context or make use of it.

Solution:

• Reference external skills from the relevant parts of in-context memory:

When running a migration, always use the skill [[skills/db-migrations]]

or external memory files:

Sarah's active projects are: Letta Code [[projects/letta_code.md]] and Letta Cloud [[projects/letta_cloud]]

• Ensure that contents of files match the file name and descriptions
• Make sure your future self will be able to find and load external files when needed.

Step 2: Implement context fixes

Create a plan for what fixes you want to make, then implement them.

Before moving on, verify:

• [ ] System prompt token budget reviewed (target ~10% of context, usually 15-20k tokens)
• [ ] No overlapping or redundant files remain
• [ ] All file descriptions are unique, accurate, and match their contents
• [ ] Moved-out knowledge has [[path]] references from in-context memory so it can be discovered
• [ ] No semantic changes to persona, user identity, or behavioral instructions

Step 3: Commit and push

Review changes, then commit with a descriptive message:

cd $MEMORY_DIR
git status                # Review what changed before staging
git add <specific files>  # Stage targeted paths — avoid blind `git add -A`
git commit --author="<AGENT_NAME> <<ACTUAL_AGENT_ID>@letta.com>" -m "fix(doctor): <summary> 🏥

<identified issues and implemented solutions>"

git push

Step 4: Final checklist and message

Tell the user what issues you identified, the fixes you made, the commit you made, and also recommend that they run /recompile to apply these changes to the current system prompt.

Before finishing make sure you:

• [ ] Resolved all the identified context issues
• [ ] Pushed your changes successfully
• [ ] Told the user to run /recompile to refresh the system prompt and apply changes

Critical information

• Ask the user about their goals for you, not the implementation: You understand your own context best, and should follow the guidelines in this document. Do NOT ask the user about their structural preferences — the context is for YOU, not them. Ask them how they want YOU to behave or know instead.