strategic-compact

name	strategic-compact
description	Maintainer-only context compaction guidance for long curation or migration sessions. Suggests manual compaction at logical boundaries instead of arbitrary compaction points.
risk	safe
source	codex-max
origin	ECC-adapted
date_added	2026-04-19

Strategic Compact

Overview

strategic-compact is a maintainer-only context-management skill. Use it during long-running curation, migration, or repository-maintenance sessions when context pressure starts to reduce quality.

The goal is to compact deliberately at logical boundaries rather than in the middle of unresolved work.

Use when

• Running a long skill-catalog curation session
• Migrating or reorganizing the workspace surface over many phases
• Switching from analysis to implementation, or from one rollout wave to another
• Context pressure is increasing and the session should be reset cleanly

Recommended compaction points

Compact at logical boundaries such as:

• after inventory / research is complete
• after a rollout wave is verified
• before switching to a different repo or workflow surface
• after a failed approach that should not pollute the next attempt

Avoid compacting:

• in the middle of an active code edit
• while unresolved implementation details still live only in conversation state
• before important findings have been persisted to files

Preserve before compacting

Before compacting, ensure key state is written to durable artifacts such as:

• task_plan.md
• findings.md
• progress.md
• skills/CATALOG.md
• skills/manifest.yaml
• docs or ADR artifacts created during the session

Output contract

When using this skill, state:

• Current phase
• Why this is a logical compact point
• What has been written to disk
• What the next phase will focus on after compacting

Related skills

• planning-with-files — persistent working memory on disk
• agent-sort — classify the skill surface before compaction
• manage-skills — apply curation changes after context has been stabilized