MODES.md

Pipeline Modes

A ContextMode identifies which messages are legally allowed to enter the expensive compression phase. Modifying modes allows developers to radically change Agent behavior without touching the underlying LangGraph logic.

Abstract Interface

class ContextMode(ABC):
    @abstractmethod
    def select(self, messages: List[ContextItem]) -> List[ContextItem]:
        pass

Core Modes

1. FullMode: Complete passthrough. Sends 100% of the messages to the LLM. Appropriate for generalized chatting.
2. MinimalMode: Strips out assistant reasoning and tool output histories. Ideal for long-running Agent cyclomatic loops that typically crash from OOM if reasoning isn't scrubbed between state node resets.

Extension Ideas (Relevance Scoring)

Production pipelines should inherit ContextMode to create a RelevanceMode, running VectorDB cosine-similarity checks inside the select method to pull k=5 strings based on the currently defined Goal.