Context Compaction Destroys Provenance in AI Agents — How to Fix It
arpit_bhayani · x · 2026-10-27
Arpit Bhayani argues that AI agent outputs need provenance, but context compaction breaks it: once older turns are replaced by a summary, URLs and citations vanish, web/tool text gets rewritten into plain narrative (so injected instructions can lose their untrusted label), and hard rules like "never touch production" can be softened into vague notes.
His fixes:
- Keep raw outputs outside the context and leave references in the summary.
- Carry user instructions forward verbatim, unaffected by compaction.
- Tag each statement with its source and whether it is a claim or verified result.
If an answer can't be traced back to its source after compaction, it can't be audited — build evals to confirm critical information always survives compaction.
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