Short one today. But it matters.

Know when to kill a session. That's the skill nobody talks about. You spin up an agent, get deep into something, hit a wall. And instead of grinding through it, the right move is just... stop. Close it. Start fresh. Sounds obvious but it isn't. There's this pull to keep going, to salvage the thread, to squeeze one more useful thing out of a context that's already poisoned. Don't.

Started noticing it recently. Long sessions degrade. Not dramatically. Subtly. The model starts hedging, second-guessing, carrying baggage from five decisions ago that have nothing to do with the current problem. It's not broken. It's just full. And a full context is a slow context. Started cutting sessions shorter on purpose. Fresh start, clean slate, sharp output. The difference is obvious once you do it back to back.

So the meta-skill here isn't "use agents better." It's "know when to stop using this agent." Brave move, honestly. Especially when you've built momentum. Especially when you're close to something. But the best engineers I know have always been good at this. Knowing when to walk away from a problem and come back with fresh eyes. Same thing. Different scale. The session is the unit now, not the day.