This violates the principle of least surprise, with nothing to indicate Claude got lobotomized while it napped when so many use prior sessions as "primed context" (even if people don't know that's what they were doing or know why it works).

The purpose of spending 10 to 50 prompts getting Claude to fill the context for you is it effectively "fine tunes" that session into a place your work product or questions are handled well.

// If this notion of sufficient context as fine tune seems surprising, the research is out there.)

Approaches tried need to deal with both of these:

1) Silent context degradation breaks the Pro-tool contract. I pay compute so I don't pay in my time; if you want to surface the cost, surface it (UI + price tag or choice), don't silently erode quality of outcomes.

2) The workaround (external context files re-primed on return) eats the exact same cache miss, so the "savings" are illusory — you just pushed the cost onto the user's time. If my own time's cheap enough that's the right trade off, I shouldn't be using your machine.