Compression Strategy

---
name: compression-strategy
description: "Recommends context compression strategies for bloated or quota-heavy sessions. Use when context feels sluggish or quota burns faster than expected."
category: business-and-finance
source_repo: athola/claude-night-market
source_path: "plugins/conserve/skills/compression-strategy/SKILL.md"
source_url: https://github.com/athola/claude-night-market/blob/HEAD/plugins/conserve/skills/compression-strategy/SKILL.md
---

# Compression Strategy

Analyze current context usage and recommend optimal compression strategies.

## When To Use

- Context feels bloated or sluggish
- Before major task phase transitions (plan complete, starting implementation)
- Token quota burning faster than expected
- After large tool output accumulations

## When NOT To Use

- Context-optimization skill already handling the scenario
- Simple queries with minimal context
- Freshly cleared context

## Required TodoWrite Items

1. `compression-strategy:analyze-context`
2. `compression-strategy:recommend-strategy`
3. `compression-strategy:estimate-savings`

## Step 1 – Analyze Context (`analyze-context`)

Run `/context` to check current usage. Then estimate:

1. **Tool output accumulation**: How much context is from tool results vs. conversation?
2. **Stale content age**: How many turns since critical decisions were made?
3. **Active files**: Which files are still relevant vs. historical?

## Step 2 – Recommend Strategy (`recommend-strategy`)

Based on analysis, recommend one of:

### Option A: `/clear` and `/catchup`

Best when:
- Task phase complete (planning done, implementation starting)
- Context > 60% full
- Most content is stale

Process:
1. Save critical state to `.claude/session-state.md`
2. Run `/clear`
3. Run `/catchup` to reload active files

### Option B: Spawn Continuation Agent

Best when:
- Context > 80% full
- Work in progress, can't stop
- Delegatable tasks remain

Process:
1. Run `Skill(conserve:clear-context)` to spawn continuation agent
2. Agent receives fresh context with saved state

### Option C: Archive and Summarize

Best when:
- Context 40-60% full
- Some stale content mixed with active
- Not ready for full clear

Process:
1. Archive old decisions/errors to `.claude/context-archive/`
2. Summarize completed work in memory
3. Continue with leaner context

### Option D: Delegate to Subagent

Best when:
- Parallel work possible
- Independent subtasks exist
- Context pressure moderate

Process:
1. Identify delegatable tasks
2. Spawn specialized agents via `Task` tool
3. Main context stays lean

## Step 3 – Estimate Savings (`estimate-savings`)

For the recommended strategy, estimate:

| Strategy | Typical Savings | Risk |
|----------|-----------------|------|
| /clear and /catchup | 70-90% | Low if state saved |
| Continuation agent | 80-95% | Low, state preserved |
| Archive and summarize | 20-40% | Very low |
| Delegate to subagent | 30-50% | Low, parallel work |
| Reversible compression (CCR) | 47-92% per archived output | Low, original cached |

The CCR row is per oversized tool output, not whole-context: a large Bash,
Read, or Grep result is archived to a handle and replaced by a digest for
future turns. Savings are content-type-dependent (logs compress hard, prose
barely at all). See `modules/reversible-compression.md`.

## Context Archive Location

Preserved context is saved to:
```
.claude/context-archive/pre-compact-YYYYMMDD-HHMMSS-SESSIONID.md
```

This is automatically created by the `pre_compact_preserve` hook before
any `/compact` operation.

## Integration Points

- **PreCompact hook**: Automatically preserves context before compression
- **Tool output summarizer**: Warns when tool outputs accumulate
- **Context warning hook**: Three-tier alerts at 40%/50%/80%

## Specialized Modules

Load `modules/log-debugging-hygiene.md` when the bloat source is
pasted log output (debug traces, CI failures, hook logs, JSONL).
That module documents a three-tier filter-first workflow with
benchmarked snippets and an honest framing of when compression
is and is not warranted. On the committed `intake_queue.jsonl`
fixture, `tail -n 100` beats lossless compression by 25
percentage points; the module formalizes that asymmetry.

Load `modules/reversible-compression.md` when large tool outputs
(code search, log dumps, file reads) are the bloat source. That
module documents the CCR pattern: the `tool_output_summarizer`
hook archives any oversized output to a content-addressed handle
under `.claude/context-archive/`, and `context_retrieve.py`
fetches the original (or a slice) on demand, so the original
survives `/clear` without staying resident.

## Example Usage

```
/compression-strategy
```

Output:
```
Context Analysis:
- Current usage: 52%
- Tool output: ~15KB (3 tool results)
- Stale content: ~40% (decisions from 8+ turns ago)

Recommendation: Option C - Archive + Summarize
- Archive old decisions to context-archive
- Keep active files and recent decisions
- Estimated savings: 25-35%

Commands:
1. Read .claude/context-archive/ to see what's preserved
2. Summarize completed work
3. Continue with leaner context
```

## Exit Criteria

- [ ] Context analyzed: current usage and tool-output share estimated
- [ ] A single strategy recommended (A-D, or reversible compression) with a
      stated reason
- [ ] Savings estimated with the named risk from the Step 3 table
- [ ] For large tool outputs, the CCR handle and `context_retrieve.py`
      retrieval command are surfaced (not just a warning)
- [ ] Recommendation refused or downgraded when the bloat source is dense
      prose (compresses by roughly nothing)

---

**Source:** [`athola/claude-night-market`](https://github.com/athola/claude-night-market) → `plugins/conserve/skills/compression-strategy/SKILL.md`