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Plan & TODO Recitation(PTR)
The agent keeps an explicit, editable todo or plan artifact (for example a write_todos tool call or a todo.md file) and continually rewrites and recites it as work proceeds. Re-emitting the evolving plan at the end of the context window pushes the global objective back into the model recent attention on every step, which resists goal drift and lost-in-the-middle forgetting across long runs.
In 30 seconds
- What
- Agent maintains an editable todo list artifact, rewrites it after each step, and recites it to keep the global objective in recent context throughout execution.
- When to use
- Long-running tasks where intermediate progress needs tracking and the agent risks forgetting the original goal or drifting between steps.
- Watch out
- Plan recitation consumes tokens on every step; if the plan grows large or tasks are numerous, overhead can outweigh the benefit of reduced goal drift.
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Plan & TODO Recitation: Overview
The agent keeps an explicit, editable todo or plan artifact (for example a write_todos tool call or a todo.md file) and continually rewrites and recites it as work proceeds. Re-emitting the evolving plan at the end of the context window pushes the global objective back into the model recent attention on every step, which resists goal drift and lost-in-the-middle forgetting across long runs.
- Explicit editable todo or plan artifact the agent owns
- Plan recited and rewritten after each step
- Keeps the global objective in recent context
- Checked-off items act as external memory of progress
- Counteracts goal drift and lost-in-the-middle forgetting
- Used in Claude Code, Deep Agents, and Manus
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References
The papers, specifications, and repositories this pattern is based on.
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