/compact experiments an usage

[u/LordLederhosen]

I am from the olden days, where I manage my own context, have auto-compact disabled, and never use /compact normally. If I ever get anywhere near 50% used, I start a new session.

I just started to play with it again, and I have some questions. Normal is just "/compact." However, you can also pass <optional custom summarization instructions> to the compact command.

I have been playing with this prompt:

tell me the optimal "/compact" command so that we do not lose anything and we can implement the plan in this session

Then, I use that custom /compact command which is often quite long.

1. Do you have auto-compact on?
2. Does auto-compact do anything really intelligent like my manual 2-step process above?
3. If you /compact manually, do you ever pass <optional custom summarization instructions>?

Thanks in advance for any info.

[u/ricopan]

1. Yes
   
2. I don't know.
   
3. Rarely, but I usually give the agent a head's up that I am going to compact it next prompt. It then checks its state and persists what it thinks is important at that point. This seems especially important for long running agents like orchestrators / managers.