context-compression

Context Compression

When to use

Use when context approaches limits or response quality degrades (due to the "lost in the middle" effect), typically after many turns of debugging or complex planning.

Requirements / Checks

• Active session contains long stack traces, large file dumps, or multiple failed iterations.

Workflow

1. Diagnose Bloat: Identify redundant outputs, contradictory instructions (clash), and "lost-in-middle" constraint forgetting.
2. Draft Summary: Synthesize the current valid state of the code/plan.
3. Extract Anti-patterns: Note what failed and why (e.g., "Attempted X, failed due to Y").
4. Generate Handoff: Write a concise handoff artifact containing the goal, current state, anti-patterns, and exact next step.
5. Restart: Instruct the user to start a new chat session and attach the handoff artifact to continue.

Quality Probes

Before trusting a compression, check it can answer:

• Recall: exact commands, errors, versions, and decisions that still matter.
• Artifact: files created, modified, inspected, and intentionally untouched.
• Continuation: next action, current blocker, validation state, and open risks.
• Decision: why key tradeoffs were chosen and what alternatives were rejected.

Safety Constraints

• Do NOT silently drop critical architectural constraints or user preferences during compaction.
• Ensure the handoff document is written to disk before asking the user to restart.

Validation / Done Criteria

• Handoff artifact is created and contains the necessary state to resume work immediately.
• The user is explicitly told to restart the session.
• Quality probes above can be answered from the compacted context without re-reading the full transcript.

Anti-loss Checklist

• Goal is clearly stated.
• Current blocker/next step is identified.
• Failed approaches are documented to prevent looping.
• Relevant file paths are listed.

References

• references/compression-quality-probes.md