compact-history

name	compact-history
description	Rewrite summary.md so future turns don't need to re-read all of conversation.jsonl. Use periodically (every ~20 turns) or when the user explicitly asks "summarize what we've done so far."

Compact history

When to use this

• conversation.jsonl is large (>20 entries since the last summary refresh).
• The user asks for a recap: "what have we decided?", "where are we?".
• Before a major fork (publish, big rewrite) — capture the trail of decisions so it's not lost in the noise.

How to do it

1. Read summary.md (current state) and conversation.jsonl (raw history). Read the last commit message of .git/HEAD (decisions land in commits).
2. Produce a fresh summary.md with these sections:
   • Open threads — questions the user has raised that don't yet have an answer.
   • Decisions made — bulleted list of key choices, each with the rationale and (if applicable) a citation.
   • Status snapshot — version, current top-level groups, answerable item count, anything notable.
3. WRITE-ONCE: do NOT touch decisions.md (that's user-curated).

Output

Overwrite summary.md (the orchestrator only preserves it on first run; explicit summary refreshes are expected to overwrite).

In reply.md, surface a one-line confirmation: "Refreshed summary.md; see Open threads (3) and Decisions made (12)."

Format guidelines

• Bullets, not prose paragraphs. Each bullet self-contained.
• Decisions in chronological order, oldest first.
• Cite by source: [guideline NICE NG52], [paper PMID 12345], [user @ 2026-05-12].
• Keep total under 200 lines; prune older decisions if you go over.

Pitfalls

• Summarizing what the AGENT thinks instead of what was DECIDED. Stay literal: "user accepted suggestion X on date Y".
• Losing rationale. If a decision had a "because of …" tied to it in the conversation, preserve that.
• Compressing too aggressively. If a decision was reversed, keep both endpoints with the reversal noted.