Compact guard

Skill rohitg00/pro-workflow/skills/compact-guard

Claude Code learns from your corrections: self-correcting memory that compounds over 50+ sessions. Context engineering, parallel worktrees, agent teams, and 17 battle-tested skills.

Install

npx -y skills add rohitg00/pro-workflow --skill compact-guard

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One thing to look at

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What its author says it does

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Smart context compaction with state preservation. Saves critical files, task progress, and working state before compaction, restores after. Use before manual compact or when auto-compact triggers.

SKILL.md

2.6 KB, as published. Nobody here has run it

Compact Guard

Protect important context through compaction cycles. Based on Claude Code internals: compaction restores max 5 files with 5K tokens each, within a 50K total budget.

Trigger

Use before /compact or when auto-compact warning appears.

Key Constants (from Claude Code source)

POST_COMPACT_MAX_FILES_TO_RESTORE = 5 — only 5 files survive
POST_COMPACT_TOKEN_BUDGET = 50K — total restore budget
POST_COMPACT_MAX_TOKENS_PER_FILE = 5K — per-file limit
Auto-compact fires at context_window - 13K buffer

Pre-Compact Checklist

Before compacting, save these to memory or a scratch file:

Current task — What are you working on? One sentence.
Files in progress — Which files are being edited? (max 5 — compaction only restores 5)
Decisions made — Any architectural choices made this session
Blockers — What's preventing progress?
Next steps — What to do immediately after compact

Strategy: Microcompact First

Before full compaction, try microcompact:

Large tool results (test output, grep results) can be trimmed
File reads that are no longer relevant can be dropped
Use subagents for heavy exploration to keep main context clean

Post-Compact Recovery

After compaction, immediately:

Re-read the top-priority file (the one you're actively editing)
Check task list for current progress
Review any scratch notes saved pre-compact
Resume from next steps

Prevention Strategies

Strategy	Token Savings	When
Delegate grep/search to subagent	30-60% per search	Always for broad searches
Read only needed lines (`offset`/`limit`)	50-90% per read	Large files
Compact at task boundaries	Preserves coherence	Between logical steps
Use `/resume` for fresh start	100%	Unrelated new task

Output

After running compact-guard:

COMPACT GUARD
  Files to preserve: [list top 5]
  Task state: [one sentence]
  Decisions: [key choices]
  Next step: [immediate action after compact]

  Ready to compact. Run /compact now.

Rules

Always save state before compacting — never compact blind
Prioritize the file you're actively editing as #1 to restore
If auto-compact fires unexpectedly, immediately re-read your working file
Keep CLAUDE.md under 60 lines to leave room for actual context