Their definition of context excludes prescriptive specs/requirements files. They are only talking about a file that summarizes what exists in the codebase, which is information that's otherwise discoverable by the agent through CLI (ripgrep, etc), and it's been trained to do that as efficiently as possible.
Also important to note that human-written context did help according to them, if only a little bit.
Effectively what they're saying is that inputting an LLM generated summary of the codebase didn't help the agent. Which isn't that surprising.
Also important to note that human-written context did help according to them, if only a little bit.
Effectively what they're saying is that inputting an LLM generated summary of the codebase didn't help the agent. Which isn't that surprising.