strategic-compact

Manual context compaction at logical task boundaries prevents context loss by preserving critical information across development phases. Prompting users to compact at exploration-to-implementation transitions and milestone completions maintains continuity without relying on automatic truncation.

You should manually compact context when transitioning from exploration to implementation, finalizing a plan, or reaching major milestones. Triggering compaction during planning, debugging, and major context shifts ensures critical research is preserved before starting fresh on the next phase.

A PreToolUse hook integrates with your workflow to prompt for a context compaction checkpoint when context risk rises. This lightweight shell-based script tracks tool usage and triggers prompts based on a configurable threshold, ensuring deliberate compaction at logical task boundaries.

Yes, you can configure the threshold for manual compaction prompts using the COMPACT_THRESHOLD environment variable. This allows you to tailor the prompt frequency to your specific workflow and context management needs.

The best way to preserve research context before implementation is to run a manual compaction checkpoint after finalizing your plan. This deliberate compaction at the exploration-to-implementation transition ensures research findings are retained while starting fresh on the execution phase.

Shell-based scripts for context compaction provide a lightweight implementation but rely on manual execution at logical task boundaries. They require user discipline to trigger compaction at exploration-to-implementation transitions and milestone completions, as automatic context truncation is intentionally avoided.