Focus Mode: Dynamic Attention Field Contractions for Deep Work

When an engineer is debugging a complex thread race condition, they shut out peripheral distractions. Their cognitive attention field contracts, focusing purely on the code paths involved.

Spector implements this contraction as a dynamic parameter adjustment called Focus Mode.

The Attention Contraction Factor

In normal mode, Spector searches memory with a wide radius, bringing in remote associations. In Focus Mode, the search space is constrained.

Focus Mode adjusts the retrieval thresholds:

• Similarity Cutoff: Raised from \(0.68\) to \(0.82\), eliminating peripheral matches.
• Spreading Activation Hops: Reduced from 3 hops to 1 hop, preventing conceptual drifts.
• Decay Rate: Accelerated for unrelated categories, keeping only current-task nodes active.

Deep Work Focus

This contraction ensures the LLM's context window contains only high-relevance, task-centric documents:

Normal Mode: Recall includes related projects, casual remarks, and past user setups.
Focus Mode:  Recall is restricted strictly to the current file, runtime exceptions, and active parameters.

This improves coding accuracy and minimizes processing costs during intense agent operations.