Situation: thread solved some things and I no longer need the full context and you don't want to trust compact from a platform that is incentivized to get you to spend -- compact and transfer context your own way where you can see what is included
Ask the thread to create a context prompt to that you want to transfer to a new thread
Simple (works for most things)
"Make me a context prompt that I can use to transfer to another window to resetup context based on all learnings on this so far"
More defined (larger work)
Analyze our entire conversation up to this point. Condense our learnings, decisions, and project state into a compressed context summary that I can paste into a fresh window to continue seamlessly.
Use these exact headers:
- Objective - One sentence defining what we are building or solving.
- Architecture / Tech Stack - Crucial environment, tools, or dependencies we are using.
- Key Decisions & Rules - Hard constraints, rejected alternatives, and stylistic preferences.
- Work Completed - Bullet points of major milestones reached.
- Current State - Exact status of the project, including any open bugs or active files.
- Immediate Next Steps - What we were about to do next.
Format the output cleanly so I can copy it all at once.
Then in your new chat window
I am continuing a project from a previous chat. The compressed context below is the new source of truth for our work together.
[PASTE YOUR COMPRESSED SUMMARY HERE]
INSTRUCTIONS:
- Treat the summary above as established fact.
- Do not ask basic introductory or environment setup questions.
- Acknowledge this context, then immediately propose the exact code or steps to tackle the "Immediate Next Steps".
Token use goes way, way down with this simple format. Need tools to do this for me like an agent or tool that rewrites the context. Context compact does some of this but also relies on trusting the context created by the company charging you by token usage count with no incentive to make it optimized.