Context load / cognitive load
emergingReal practice, thin evidence. Mostly vendor-stated or reported rather than measured.
Two budgets that most prompt-engineering writing collapses into one. Context load is always-loaded material occupying the window, paid in tokens and attention. Cognitive load is the cost on the human of knowing which documents exist and when to reach for each. The second is not a cost to minimise: it is the price of human agency, spent where judgment matters and removed where it does not.