The Risks of Overcontexting
What you learn here
Giving Claude too much information, especially undifferentiated or irrelevant details, can reduce accuracy instead of improving it. This lesson explains why overcontexting hurts results and how to avoid it.
What goes wrong
- Claude misprioritizes what is important
- Outputs drift off track
- Conflicting signals create reasoning noise
Instead of "give more to be safe," the refined mindset is:
Give just enough to be correct, no more, no less.
Why this matters
Excess context does not just waste space. It can actively dilute the signal that should guide the response, making correct answers less likely.
Key Takeaways
- Too much context can reduce accuracy
- Noise competes with what actually matters
- Quality beats quantity every time