More isn’t better

Putting the right passage in the window fixed Mara Quill’s answer. The team’s next thought: send more passages, so the right one is always in there somewhere.

This chapter: If the fact is in the window, does the model always find it?

You will learn

Why a fact in the middle of many passages is easier to miss
How related but wrong passages pull the answer off
Context rot: why a fuller window can answer worse

Words you’ll meet (3)

Distractor: A passage that looks related to the question but doesn’t hold the answer.
Lost in the middle: Models find a fact best at the start or end of a long input, and miss it more often in the middle.
Context rot: Anthropic: more context isn't automatically better; as the token count grows, accuracy and recall degrade, which it calls context rot.

The picture on the left is live. Each step below asks you to do one thing in it; the story continues here as you go.

Step 1 of 4

Mara Quill asks: “How many days after delivery can I still ask for a refund?” Chapter 1 put the one passage that answers it in the window, alone. Send it that way first.