Context Compaction

Context Compaction

A long task does not fail at the context limit, it degrades well before it. The agent starts forgetting decisions it made an hour ago, re-litigates settled questions, and re-reads files it already understood. This harness compacts deliberately: it decides in advance what must survive, writes a checkpoint that can be resumed cold, and drops the rest.

When to use

• Multi-hour or multi-session tasks: migrations, large refactors, long investigations.
• Any agent loop that runs until a goal is met rather than for a fixed number of steps.
• Work that may be interrupted and picked up later, possibly by someone else.

Install

npx openagents-cli add openagents/context-compaction

What is in the package

• HARNESS.md - what survives compaction, what does not, and when to trigger it.
• templates/checkpoint.md - the checkpoint format, resumable without the transcript.

License

MIT