Quick fixes AG-C003
The context you never trim
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A session whose context only ever grows pays for its whole history on every turn. Compact at natural breakpoints, or start fresh with a summary.
My session got huge and sluggish? Here's the quick fix ↓ — the why sits right below it.
Quick fix: The context you never trim
Instead of One session, all day, context growing turn by turn, never trimmed.
Try At a natural breakpoint (a task finished, a direction settled) compact the session (/compact in Claude Code) or restart from a short summary of what still matters.
Trim at the seams, when nothing in flight can be lost.
Why this works
Everything in the window rides along on every turn: each old file dump and dead-end draft is re-processed with every new message, which costs quota and dilutes attention with material that stopped mattering hours ago. Compaction replaces that history with a summary; a fresh start with a hand-written summary is the same move with you choosing what survives. Both are cheapest exactly at the breakpoints, because mid-task there is live state a summary might drop, and after the task there is not.
When this applies
The session has run far past its task boundaries, answers have started slowing or drifting toward old material, or a limit is approaching faster than your work rate explains.
Template
At the breakpoint:
We just finished [the sub-task]. Compact now — or: summarise what still matters going forward (decisions, constraints, open items), and I'll continue from that in a fresh session.
Go deeper
What the window is and why size costs: the context window. The judgement call between correcting and restarting: when to start fresh. For heavy Claude Code use, quota discipline builds the breakpoint habit; for builders, the API-side machinery is context editing, compaction, or memory.
Improve next
- This conversation is past its best
This chat is carrying baggage — a fresh start may work better.
- Stop hitting the limit mid-task
You keep hitting the limit mid-task — plan the window, not the prompt.
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Say what you expected and what you got. That is usually the shortest route to a correction, and it goes on the public issue tracker so the fix is visible.