strategic-compact

You can prevent context drift by prompting manual compaction at logical workflow boundaries. A PreToolUse hook tracks tool calls and issues reminders every 25 calls, enforcing a configurable threshold to compact context at meaningful milestones rather than arbitrarily trimming it.

Strategic context compaction is a technique to reduce context drift by prompting manual compaction at logical workflow boundaries. You should use it for multi-phase tasks like research, planning, implementation, and testing where context can balloon and phase transitions matter.

You can configure the context compaction threshold via the ~/.claude/settings.json file. The default threshold is set to 50 tool calls, with the PreToolUse hook issuing periodic reminders every 25 calls to prompt you to compact context.

Strategic compaction does not interrupt the workflow. It hooks into PreToolUse to surface compaction prompts without halting your process, allowing you to manage context smoothly across multi-phase projects like research, implementation, and testing.

Relying on tool call counts for context management means compaction prompts are triggered by numerical thresholds rather than actual context size or semantic boundaries. This works best for structured multi-phase tasks but may not perfectly align with highly irregular or unpredictable workflow patterns.