compaction-strategy.md

Context Compaction Strategy

When compacting this conversation, follow these preservation priorities.

Always Preserve

1. Decisions with reasoning — What was decided AND why
2. Code changes — File paths, what changed, the intent
3. Current task state — What we're doing and progress made
4. Errors and fixes — Problems encountered and how resolved
5. User-provided context — Constraints, preferences, domain knowledge
6. Open questions — Unresolved items that need addressing

Compress or Drop

1. Exploration dead ends — Keep only the conclusion, not the journey
2. Verbose tool output — Summarize file listings, grep results, traces
3. Intermediate reasoning — Keep conclusions, drop the process
4. Repeated operations — Summarize patterns, don't list each one
5. Superseded info — Drop things that are no longer true

Output Format

Structure the compacted context as:

CURRENT STATE: [task] / [phase] / [status]

DECISIONS:
- [decision] — [why]

CODE CHANGES:
- [file:line] — [what and why]

OPEN QUESTIONS:
- [question]

KEY CONTEXT:
[essential background]

NEXT STEPS:
1. [action]

Use bullet points. Include file paths. Keep reasoning for decisions.