Intentional Compaction

Last updated: 2026-07-05

As context fills, continually summarize and distill information into structured artifacts (such as progress.md, research notes, or concrete plans). Actively discard raw chat/tool noise and retain only:

• Goal
• Current understanding
• Decisions made
• Open problems
• Next steps

This resets context, preserves the important signal, and prevents drift and hallucinated direction changes.

Frequent Intentional Compaction (FIC): The Workflow

Core workflow:

1. Research – Understand the codebase, relevant files, data flow, and root causes. Output: a compact research document.
2. Plan – Outline precise steps — what to change, where, and how to test/verify. Output: an implementation plan.
3. Implement – Execute steps methodically, compressing updates back into the plan as needed.

Best practice: Keep context window usage around 40–60% and continuously compress work state into durable, external artifacts.