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Compact Early, On Your Terms

Auto-compaction fires when the window is nearly full — which is after quality already sagged, and the automatic summary guesses at what mattered. Compact earlier and by hand, or ask the agent to lower its auto-compact threshold, so the squeeze happens while the session is still sharp.

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Why it works

Auto-compaction fires when the window is nearly full — which is AFTER quality already sagged, and its automatic summary guesses at what mattered. Compacting early and manually flips both: you choose the moment (a natural task boundary, while the session is still sharp) and you dictate what survives. The best version is making the squeeze rare at all: /clear at boundaries beats /compact mid-flight.

How to do it

  1. Glance at /context at natural boundaries — end of a feature, before a new direction.
  2. Don't ride past ~70–80%: compact while quality is still good, not after it visibly isn't.
  3. Always compact WITH instructions: name what the summary must keep.
  4. Prefer /clear whenever the task is genuinely done — free beats expensive-and-lossy.
  5. Ask the agent to lower its auto-compact threshold if you keep getting surprised by it.
  6. Standing insurance: the CLAUDE.md preserve-line (see the compaction-rules tip) works even when auto fires.

Copy this

prompt
/compact Keep: the list of files we changed, my stated requirements, and the decisions we agreed on. Everything else can compress.

What to watch for

  • Compaction is itself an expensive call — the agent re-reads the whole conversation to write the summary. Scheduled preventive compacting of short sessions is pure waste.
  • After any compaction, spot-check one detail you care about ('what format did I ask for?') — trust, then verify the summary kept it.

Sources

Original: conon.aiDocumentation: code.claude.com

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