strategic-compact

name	strategic-compact
description	Strategic compression — Manual compression of contexts at logical boundaries rather than arbitrary automatic compression. Key decisions and constraints are preserved and intermediate exploration is discarded.

Strategic Compact

Overview

In long sessions, the context window is limited. This skill guides when to compact, what to keep, and what to discard.

Core principle: **Compress at logical boundaries, not at any time. **

When to Activate

• A long-running task is approaching context limits and needs a compact handoff.
• Work is crossing a phase boundary such as discovery to implementation or implementation to verification.
• A session must preserve decisions, modified files, constraints, tests, and unfinished steps.
• The user asks to compress, checkpoint, or make the current state resumable.
• A session is about to cross a planning, implementation, validation, or handoff boundary.
• The context window is close to compaction and important decisions must survive.
• The user asks to save or preserve state before continuing later.

Red Flags

• Compression happens midway through an implementation step with unstated file changes.
• The retained summary omits constraints, modified files, validation commands, or current priority.
• Exploration transcripts are preserved while actual decisions and blockers are lost.

Checklist

• Record the current mission, constraints, modified files, and next step.
• Preserve verification commands and whether they passed or failed.
• Drop redundant search output after retaining the evidence-backed conclusions.

Compress decision table

Current stage	Next stage	Whether to compress	Reason
Research/Exploration	Planning	Yes	Exploration details do not need to be brought into planning
Plan	Implement	Yes	Keep the plan, discard the planning process
Implementation step N	Implementation step N+1	No	Compression during implementation will lose context
Implementation complete	Validation	Optional	If the context is close to the upper limit
Verify	Submit	No	Verification results need to be submitted
Task A completed	Task B started	Yes	Compression between different tasks

Keep list after compression

Must be retained:

• Current mission goals and constraints
• Architectural decisions made and reasons
• list of modified files
• Unfinished steps
• Issues found and TODO
• VibeGuard constraints (always retained)

Can be discarded:

• A complete reference to the file content (just keep the path)
• Intermediate results during search
• Full stack of resolved bugs
• Exploratory code reading record

Usage

When it feels like the context is running out:

1. Determine which stage you are currently in
2. Check the compression decision table to confirm whether compression is suitable
3. If appropriate, organize summaries by retention list
4. Perform compression

Red Flags

• Compacting mid-implementation - losing the current edit path can cause duplicated or contradictory work.
• Dropping constraints - the next session may violate VibeGuard rules without realizing the guardrail existed.
• No modified-file list - resume work becomes guesswork.
• Waiting for overflow - passive truncation is less reliable than deliberate compression.

Checklist

• Preserve current goal, constraints, and done-when criteria.
• List modified files and pending verification commands.
• Record key decisions and why they were made.
• Keep unresolved blockers and next priority explicit.
• Remove bulky intermediate search details once the conclusion is captured.