Context usage is definitely a problem that's on my mind also and semantic anchors are one area I'm exploring but don't have a clear architecture for it jotted down yet. The real problem I'm facing right now is how to inject this into say claude or chatgpt and have those agents default use it as a memory layer
The issue I perceive though is that adding an MCP server alone is not enough to modify the system prompt of the AI Agent. I tried to have the mcp server description be an injected prompt to add these instructions to the system prompt but that doesn't seem to work, I tried adding sampling to the MCP server which supposedly should be able to plug into messages without luck, tried to optimise for chatGPT with an OpenAPI spec etc.
The only way I found that I can get those clients to use my memory layer is by doing what you describe - which is not necessarily the most user friendly/one-click setup I desire
one hacky workaround ive seen work: expose a tool thats always called first via a resource that hints at it, basically tricking the agent into self-priming. ugly but functional.
honestly though for true one-click youre probably stuck until clients expose better hooks. the spec needs to catch up to the use case.
I believe you're right and I'm just gonna have to wait or try to engage directly with MCP/Anthropic/OpenAi and further this agenda