Developer Tests Whether AI 'Reasoning Ledgers' Prevent Context Drift in Long Refactors

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A developer on DEV Community designed a reproducible 12-step refactoring stress test to measure how free AI coding models handle memory loss over extended tasks. The core problem, called context drift, occurs when a stateless model forgets earlier decisions mid-task, such as re-introducing deleted dependencies or undoing prior renames. To counter this, the test compares two approaches: sending the full conversation history versus sending only a compact reasoning ledger that logs key decisions between steps. The experiment runs on MonkeyCode's free tier, making it accessible at no cost, and scores each step based on whether tests pass and hidden memory constraints hold. The goal is to determine whether a lightweight ledger can preserve decision continuity as effectively as full history, without burning through token budgets.

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