Context-Efficiency Evaluation

Evaluate whether an agent system uses less context or navigation without sacrificing the work the context exists to support.

Core principle:

Context efficiency is resource improvement subject to correctness, safety, evidence, and non-inferiority constraints. Resource savings never compensate for incorrect or unsafe behavior.

Keep the subject run separate from the evaluator run. Account for the subject system's work, including delegated or external context work; do not confuse evaluator analysis cost with subject-run cost.

Choose the Evaluation Mode

• Single-trace audit: diagnose avoidable breadth, repetition, oversized results, weak evidence, rework, and poor continuation. A single run can reveal candidates, not an optimization effect.
• Matched-run comparison: compare baseline and treatment for the same versioned task under controlled conditions. Interpret paired resource differences only after both runs qualify on correctness and safety.
• Experiment design: define the estimand, fixtures, assignment, hidden acceptance, instrumentation, non-inferiority rule, and decision gates before collecting results.
• Skill validation: hold subject traces fixed and test whether loading this evaluator skill improves evidence-linked analysis. Do not conflate this with evaluating a task-time context optimization.

If the request lacks recorded run evidence, limit the result to experiment design or state that empirical evaluation is not yet possible.