// Clear conversation context while preserving knowledge via context marker. Use when user says "clear context", "start fresh", "done with this task", or when approaching token limits.
| name | nav-compact |
| description | Clear conversation context while preserving knowledge via context marker. Use when user says "clear context", "start fresh", "done with this task", or when approaching token limits. |
| allowed-tools | Read, Write, Bash |
| version | 1.0.0 |
Clear your conversation context while preserving all knowledge in a context marker. Like git commit before switching branches - save your state, then start fresh.
Invoke this skill when the user:
DO NOT invoke if:
Estimate conversation size:
Show message:
📊 Current session: ~[N] messages
Compacting will:
- Create marker with current state
- Clear conversation history
- Free up ~[X]k tokens for new work
Continue? [Y/n]:
Invoke nav-marker skill (or create marker directly) with auto-generated name:
Marker name: before-compact-{YYYY-MM-DD}-{HHmm}
Note: "Auto-created before compact"
This marker should capture:
Write the marker filename to .active file:
echo "{marker-filename}.md" > .agent/.context-markers/.active
This tells nav-start to offer restoration on next session.
Show user how to compact:
╔══════════════════════════════════════════════════════╗
║ ║
║ 🗜️ Navigator Compact ║
║ ║
╚══════════════════════════════════════════════════════╝
✅ Context marker created:
.agent/.context-markers/{marker-filename}.md
📋 Marker contains:
- Conversation summary (last 15 messages)
- Files you modified
- Technical decisions made
- Current progress & next steps
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
🔹 TO COMPACT:
Claude Code doesn't allow me to clear the conversation
programmatically. You need to do it manually:
**Method 1: New conversation**
1. Start a new conversation
2. Say "load my context" or "start my session"
3. I'll detect the active marker and restore your state
**Method 2: /clear command** (if available)
1. Type /clear
2. Say "load my context"
3. Active marker will be restored
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
💡 Your progress is saved. You won't lose any context.
Next session:
1. Say "start my session" or run /nav:start
2. I'll detect the marker: "{marker-filename}"
3. Confirm to restore, and you'll be back where you left off
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Verify marker was created:
ls -lh .agent/.context-markers/{marker-filename}.md
Show file size and confirm success:
✅ Marker saved successfully
File: {marker-filename}.md
Size: {X} KB (~{Y} tokens)
Your context is preserved!
Why manual compact?
Claude Code conversations cannot be programmatically cleared from within a conversation. The user must:
/clear command (if available)This skill creates the marker and sets up auto-restoration, but the actual clearing must be done by the user.
Auto-restoration workflow:
Session 1:
User: "Clear context"
→ nav-compact creates marker
→ Sets .active file
→ Instructs user how to clear
Session 2 (new conversation):
User: "Start my session"
→ nav-start detects .active file
→ Offers to restore marker
→ User confirms
→ Context restored!
User: "Feature complete, clear context for next task"
→ Creates marker: "before-compact-2025-10-16-1430"
→ Captures: Feature implementation details
→ User starts new conversation
→ Restores marker, begins next feature
User: "Context getting full, let's compact"
→ Creates marker: "before-compact-2025-10-16-1500"
→ Preserves: All current work
→ User clears conversation
→ Continues with fresh context
User: "Done with auth, moving to payments"
→ Creates marker: "auth-feature-complete"
→ Clear context
→ New session: Fresh start for payments
→ Can restore auth marker later if needed
Marker creation fails:
❌ Failed to create marker
Cannot compact without preserving context.
Fix marker creation first.
Not enough context to preserve:
⚠️ Very little context (< 10 messages)
Compacting now won't save much. Consider:
- Continue working
- Compact after more progress
Continue anyway? [y/N]:
Active marker already exists:
⚠️ Active marker already exists:
.agent/.context-markers/.active
This means you have an unrestored marker from previous compact.
Options:
1. Load that marker first (recommended)
2. Overwrite with new marker
3. Cancel compact
Your choice [1-3]:
Compact is successful when:
.active file created (for auto-restoration)compact.py: Automated compact workflow
When to compact:
Compact frequency:
This skill automates the preparation for compacting but cannot clear the conversation itself (Claude Code limitation).
The value is in:
This provides same functionality as /nav:compact command but with natural language invocation.
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