The context stage of the loop. What the agent sees is the one thing you control in the middle of a task, so five topics cover choosing it, pointing at it, keeping it from going stale inside a session and between sessions, and deciding what to let in from outside the repository.
5 topics
Chapter 3 prepared the repository once. This chapter is about what happens at the start of every task, before the agent changes anything: deciding what it will read. The agent knows nothing about Cragmoor beyond the files, messages and command output in its window, and it searches from the words of your request. Whatever the window lacks, the change will lack too.
The refund task shows it from the first page. One sentence sends the agent to refunds and nowhere else, and the cancellation screen in booking goes on promising members the old deadline. The same sentence with three files named produces a question for Ines instead of a wrong diff. The rest of the chapter covers pointing the agent at evidence instead of paraphrasing it, recognising when a long session has drifted and starting fresh, keeping the instructions that persist between sessions true, and deciding what documentation, tickets and tool servers may bring into the window and carry out of it.
What the agent knows on one turn, and where each part is controlled
Fetched pages, tickets, tool results
Text from outside the repository, some of it untrusted. Topic 05.
Files read and command output
Chosen by your pointers, or by a search that starts from your words. Topics 01 and 02.
The session so far
Your messages and the agent's replies, losing weight as the window fills. Topic 03.
Instructions that persist
The project file, your personal file and saved notes, loaded first in every session. Topic 04.