PRODUCTION SCENARIO
A research coordinator must pull findings out of 50 technical whitepapers, and each search returns tens of pages of raw extract. Its context fills before the tenth paper, and it has to compare findings from all 50 at the end.
Which change lets the coordinator finish the set?
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Answer: Give each paper to a worker subagent that returns only its findings to the lead
Workers that each hold their own context return 50 short findings to the coordinator instead of 50 long documents, which is what keeps it inside one window. max_tokens caps output, not input, so a full context stays full. clear_tool_uses drops the oldest tool results first, and those are the early papers' findings that still have to be compared at the end. Compaction summarizes the whole transcript, so the per-paper detail is exactly what it loses.