Exactly. That mental shift changes the whole architecture. Once context is treated as system state, the main challenge becomes maintaining its quality over time.

For validation, I think there are a few layers. First, metadata-based checks (source, timestamp, confidence, ownership) help detect stale information before retrieval. Then contradiction checks become important, especially when multiple sources or previous decisions are merged into the same context window.

In more complex systems, I see context validation becoming similar to data validation pipelines: checking relevance, freshness, consistency, and whether the retrieved information actually supports the current task.