Context — Context Window Management

When to Trigger

• Context window > 70% capacity
• Long conversation with many tool calls
• Before starting a large new task in an existing session
• User asks to "clean up" or "start fresh"

Process

1. Assess

• Estimate current context usage
• Identify what's consuming the most context (large file reads, verbose outputs)

2. Preserve

Before compacting, ensure critical state is saved:

• Current task and progress → $HARNESS_DIR/sessions/
• Key decisions made → note in conversation
• Files being worked on → list explicitly

3. Compact

Suggest or trigger compaction with a clear summary:

Summary for compaction:
- Working on: [task description]
- Files modified: [list]
- Current status: [what's done, what remains]
- Key decisions: [important choices made]
- Next step: [what to do after compaction]

4. Resume

After compaction, the resume hook will reload:

• Session snapshot from $HARNESS_DIR/sessions/
• Project memory from $HARNESS_DIR/memory/
• Evolved skills from $HARNESS_DIR/evolved/

Anti-Rationalization

| Excuse | Rebuttal | What to do instead | |--------|----------|-------------------| | "I still have context left" | Quality degrades well before the hard limit. 70% is the trigger. | Compact proactively. Better to lose 5 min than lose coherence. | | "Compacting will lose important context" | That's why you preserve first. The resume hook restores it. | Save state → compact → resume loads snapshot + memory + skills. | | "I'll just re-read the files" | Re-reading 5 large files wastes 30%+ of your fresh context. | Summarize key facts before compacting. Read only what you need after. |

Evidence Required

Before compacting, confirm ALL of these:

• ] Current task and progress noted in summary
• ] Files being worked on listed explicitly
• ] Key decisions recorded (not just "some decisions were made")
• ] Next step specified clearly
• ] Snapshot written to $HARNESS_DIR/sessions/ (show file name)

Compacting without a summary = guaranteed context loss.

Red Flags

• Continuing with 90%+ context without compacting (quality degrades)
• Compacting without saving state (lose track of progress)
• Re-reading large files after compaction (defeats the purpose)