Compact

Preserve critical state while freeing context capacity. Writes to disk, clears context, continues with renewed capacity.

When to Use

• Context status shows High or Critical
• Session running > 60 minutes
• About to start complex multi-step work
• Noticing degraded responses or forgotten instructions

What Compaction Does

Before: Context ~100% saturated After: Context ~50% healthy (state saved to disk)

Process

1. Capture State → Write to .context/compact-state.md
2. Refresh Instructions → Re-read safety rules, orchestration mode, tools
3. Acknowledge → Report compaction complete, ready to continue

State File Template

# Compact State — [timestamp]

## Session Objective
[overall goal]

## Current Task
[what we're working on]

## Completed Work
- [task]: [outcome]

## Key Decisions
- [decision]: [rationale]

## Critical Context
[must-preserve information]

## Next Steps
1. [immediate]
2. [following]

What to Preserve

• Session objective and current task
• Completed work (avoid redoing)
• Key decisions (maintain consistency)
• Blockers and issues
• User preferences expressed

What to Clear (Safe)

• Exploration that didn't pan out
• Verbose explanations
• Raw file contents (re-read from disk)
• Detailed agent outputs (summary sufficient)

Output

## Context Compacted

**State saved**: `.context/compact-state.md`

### Preserved
- Session objective
- Current task
- Key decisions

### Restored
- Safety rules
- Orchestration mode
- Tool awareness

### Status
**Before**: Critical (~90%)
**After**: Low (~40%)

Ready to continue: [task]

Related

• Emergency compact: See reference/emergency-compact.md
• Run first: /context-status to determine if needed
• Resume from: /session-start