Annual Context Window Census
The window grew. So did the preamble.
Capacity is not comprehension, and irrelevant context now scales beautifully.
Form DPH-12 · Revised whenever a new model drops
01 / Self-assessment
Let us review the symptoms.
Mark every statement that feels uncomfortably specific. Your answers stay in this browser. The Department has enough paperwork.
Form DPH-12 · Paper edition. Completed by hand. Scored by honesty. Filed nowhere.
Signature of the respondent
Date (time lost to prompting need not be disclosed)
DSM-AI · Diagnostic ladder (peer review pending)
02 / Progression
The six stages of “one more prompt.”
Advancement is neither linear nor mandatory. Most people move freely between stages depending on deadlines and available snacks.
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Stage 0
Healthy curiosity
You ask a useful question. You verify the answer. You leave.
Clinical note: Astonishing form.
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Stage 1
The polite return
You come back tomorrow. It remembers nothing. You forgive it.
Clinical note: Normal tool use with early anthropomorphism.
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Stage 3
Prompt engineer
Your question now has a role, constraints, examples, and a small constitution.
Clinical note: The preamble exceeds the task.
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Stage 6
Local MCP collector
You connected six tools so you would not need to open a seventh tab.
Clinical note: There are now eleven tabs.
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Stage 9
Context window maximalist
You no longer provide context. You provide an archive.
Clinical note: Somewhere, a token counter is crying.
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Final stage
Release notes recreationalist
You know what changed before your colleagues know there was a release.
Clinical note: You are reading this website recreationally.
External field report · Exhibit A
“It’s like I have a jet pack. I can’t stop thinking about it.”
External field reports · Evidence locker
Exhibits B through I.
Public statements collected from the timeline and entered into evidence. Authenticity: plausible. Outcomes: unverified. Hydration status of the authors: unknown.
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Exhibit B
“I'm giving up drinking because of Claude Code. I need my brain to be maximally pristine so I can sling 10k LOC a day.”
Garry Tan, public timeline, 5 Mar 2026
Department note: Filed under recovery programs, competing.
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Exhibit C
“There's a new kind of coding I call ‘vibe coding’, where you fully give in to the vibes, embrace exponentials, and forget that the code even exists.”
Andrej Karpathy, public timeline, 2 Feb 2025
Department note: The Bureau confirms the code still exists.
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Exhibit D
“‘Rome wasn't built in a day’ but they didn't have claude code”
Attribution redacted at 156,000 retweets
Department note: Rome also lacked a rollback strategy.
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Exhibit E
“huh why tf is claude putting itself as a contributor on my repo!”
verrsane, public timeline
Department note: The contributor graph remembers what the operator forgets.
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Exhibit F
“Claude: Hey, mind if I
grep -ohP "useEffect\(.*?\[\K[^\]]+" **/*.tsx 2>&1|tr ',' '\n'|awk 'NF{$1=$1;a[$0]++}END{for(k in a)print a[k],k}'|sort -rn|head -20Me: ... yeah go for it dude”
David K, public timeline
Department note: Consent was obtained. Comprehension was not.
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Exhibit G
“I'm not joking and this isn't funny. We have been trying to have a baby since last year. There are various options, not everyone is aligned... I gave Claude Code a description of the problem, it impregnated my wife in an hour.”
lucacs, public timeline
Department note: The Department declines to certify this outcome.
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Exhibit H
“This is what addiction looks like when it's wearing a productivity costume.”
Mejba Ahmed, “Why I'm Addicted to Claude Code (And Not Embarrassed)”
Department note: Self-awareness filed. The card was charged regardless.
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Exhibit I
“Addicted to Claude Code — help”
Department note: The thread recommends breaks and hydration. The Department concurs with the thread.
Exhibits reproduce public statements for satirical commentary under the Department's evidence-handling policy: quote accurately, link when possible, redact when kind, and never mistake a joke for a diagnosis.
International Claudeholics Association · Open protocol
03 / Recovery
A seven-step program with no login streak.
Recovery does not mean abandoning useful tools. It means noticing when the tool has quietly become the activity.
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01 · Biological maintenance
Drink water.
The model can wait. Your kidneys have a stricter rate limit.
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02 · Primary sources
Read the documentation.
AI can orient you. The source tells you what the source actually says.
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03 · Manual mode
Write the first draft yourself.
Struggle is not always inefficiency. Sometimes it is the lesson arriving.
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04 · Peer network
Ask a human.
They may disagree, remember context, or suggest lunch. All useful features.
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05 · Context hygiene
Protect private information.
Remove secrets, personal data, and anything you would not place on a projector.
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06 · Verification
Check the confident parts twice.
Fluency is presentation. Evidence is evidence.
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07 · Carbon-based rendering
Go outside.
Observe a tree with no loading state. Maintain one hobby without a roadmap.
Initiate emergency analog protocol
Remain calm. Your context window cannot follow you here.
- Save your work.
- Close one browser tab.
- Put both feet on the floor.
- Look at something that was not generated.
No account cancellation is required. This is just a break.
Filed without irony
04 / A balance manifesto
Keep the spark. Keep the skepticism.
Generative AI can be a remarkable companion to curiosity. It can help us cross unfamiliar ground, test an idea, find the shape of a question, or begin when the blank page feels heavier than it should.
But speed is not the same as understanding. A polished answer is not necessarily a true one. When we stop checking, practicing, and making decisions of our own, convenience begins to charge interest.
Craft lives in attention: choosing what matters, noticing what is wrong, and staying with a problem long enough to be changed by it. No tool can outsource that responsibility. Good tools give it more room.
Use AI to expand your agency, not replace it.
Keep learning the fundamentals. Keep private things private. Ask humans what they see. Make something inefficiently, just because your hands and mind deserve the practice. Let an answer surprise you, then verify it.
Curiosity brought us here. Curiosity can also lead us back into the world: to books, collaborators, difficult drafts, patient work, and ideas that are unmistakably our own.
The goal is not less wonder. It is more intention.
Bureau of Context Hygiene · Inspection desk
05 / Context hygiene inspection
Submit a draft prompt for inspection.
A local inspector reviews drafts for secrets, excess context, and missing stopping conditions. Nothing you paste leaves this page; the inspector has no network access and no opinions about you.
Bureau of Context Hygiene · Public notices
06 / Department bulletins
Guidance for a rapidly changing condition.
Occasional field notes for surviving new models, larger context windows, and tools with more permissions than anyone remembers granting.
Model Release Coping Protocol
A new model shipped. Your old work remains valid.
A five-step procedure for evaluating capability without replacing your entire personality.
MCP Accumulation Advisory
Your tools can access more than your memory can.
An inventory procedure for permissions acquired during moments of enthusiasm.
Three notices filed. More paperwork will be issued only when useful.
Open the bulletin archiveAnnual Context Window Census · Live returns
The census is open. Respondents are counted, never identified.
Returns are filed as public GitHub issues containing one stage number and nothing else, then tallied into a static ledger by a scheduled workflow. Consulting the returns fetches one local JSON file; declining to consult them fetches nothing at all.
Public records · Some portions tastefully redacted
07 / Department records
For those still reading.
Achievements under review
- Self-awareness unlocked Reached the bottom of an AI dependency website.
- Primary source enjoyer Opened the documentation before the chat.
- Touch grass Left this tab for one uninterrupted minute.
Condition, longitudinally
A daily high-water mark of your Prompt Withdrawal Index, recorded only in this browser. The chart begins when a symptom does.
Footnotes
- The Prompt Withdrawal Index has not been peer reviewed, mostly because our peers are busy prompting.
- “Claudeholism” is a joke, not a diagnosis. Real distress deserves real support from qualified people.
- No models were emotionally attached during development. Several humans remain under observation.
Bureau of Context Hygiene · Personnel division
Sit the inspector examination.
Six exhibits. Two stamps. One certificate with no legal standing whatsoever.
Approved observations · Static public ledger
Patterns, not patient files.
Recognizable AI-use habits paired with useful counterweights. The published ledger contains no personal wellbeing stories.