The gauge
Next to the message box is a small ring showing how full things are getting. It’s green while there’s plenty of room, turns amber as it fills, and red when it’s nearly full. Watching it isn’t a chore — it just tells you when one of the options below is worth taking.
The same gauge at three points in a long task. Amber is the moment to consider compacting.
What to do when it fills
Three choices, in roughly the order you should consider them.Compact — keep going in the same task
Compact — keep going in the same task
Click the ring, or type
/compact. Your coworker summarises everything so far and carries on with the summary instead of the full history.Best when the task isn’t finished and the earlier detail no longer matters — a long research session where you’ve got what you need from the first twenty pages.The trade: it keeps the conclusions and loses the fine detail. If you might need something specific from earlier, save it to a file first.Start a new task — a clean slate
Start a new task — a clean slate
Type
/new. A fresh task, nothing carried over from the conversation.Best when you’ve moved on to a genuinely different job. Most “the conversation got too long” situations are actually two jobs in one task.Your coworker still has its instructions, skills and memory — you lose the conversation, not the coworker.Do nothing
Do nothing
If the task is nearly done, just finish it. The gauge is a warning, not a wall.
Avoiding the problem
Put things in files, not in the chat. A file stays available at full detail regardless of how long the conversation gets. Pasting a large export into a message is the fastest way to fill the space up. One job per task. The most common cause of a very long conversation is three unrelated jobs sharing one. Ask for the summary before you need it. On a long research task, “summarise what you’ve found so far into a file” gives you something durable.What carries between tasks
This trips people up, so plainly:
So a new task doesn’t mean starting from nothing. Your coworker still knows who you are and how you like things — it just doesn’t have this particular conversation.
Common questions
Will it forget mid-task without telling me?
Will it forget mid-task without telling me?
No. The gauge shows you well before it matters, and compacting is a deliberate act — either yours or one it tells you about.
Does compacting lose my files?
Does compacting lose my files?
No. Files are untouched. Only the conversation is summarised.
Can I compact more than once?
Can I compact more than once?
Yes. A very long-running task may compact several times.
How do I keep something important?
How do I keep something important?
Ask your coworker to save it to a file, or tell it to remember — see What a coworker remembers.
Next steps
What a coworker remembers
What survives everything.
Managing your tasks
One job per task.
Files overview
Where to put the detail.
Slash commands
/compact and /new.