Pattern: Context Pruning Is Becoming a Dedicated Infrastructure Layer, Not a Prompt Trick

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Across 2026 writing, 'dynamic context pruning' — removing, compressing, or prioritizing agent memory in real time — is being treated as a first-class infrastructure layer rather than a one-off prompt tweak. The framing inverts the old assumption: with long-horizon agents, the binding constraint is what the agent remembers and sees at the moment of action (its state), and too much retained context actively degrades reasoning. Expect 'context engineers' and pruning middleware to be standard in agent stacks.