@misc{9235472,
  abstract     = {{Large Language Models (LLMs) are increasingly being used as a key technology in agent-based systems for software-related tasks. These systems are intended to support long-term tasks and may consist of multiple interacting agents working towards shared goals. In these scenarios, agents are expected to work on the same codebase over multiple sessions and development cycles. In long-term software development tasks, maintaining continuity across multiple development cycles remains a significant challenge. Due to limited context windows, agents often treat development sessions independently, leading to a loss of understanding in important architectural decisions over time.

This thesis evaluates five combinations of context engineering strategies across two development cycles in order to analyze how differing strategies affect the agent's continuity. These strategies were tested using a mock web development project, where the agent was tasked with initializing and further developing the codebase while adhering to specific architectural and stylistic decisions (referred to as mid-session decisions) made in previous development cycles. The thesis benchmarks the effectiveness of these strategies based on requirement compliance, decision consistency, time- and token efficiency. 

The results indicate that implementing any form of persistent context management significantly improves the agent's ability to adhere to mid-session decisions compared to a baseline of no strategies. Among the tested methods, decision 2 (decision log) proved to be the most effective in maintaining continuity, resulting in the highest decision consistency while remaining cost-effective and time-efficient. This finding suggests that for sustainable agentic development, context management strategies should prioritize the preservation of specific architectural decisions over general documentation of finished tasks.}},
  author       = {{Jonsäter, Teo and Svensson, Anna}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  note         = {{Student Paper}},
  title        = {{Assessing Continuity in Agentic Development Across Multiple Development Cycles}},
  year         = {{2026}},
}