Skip to content

Feature: allow /compact to be invoked by the agent (programmatic compaction) #3916

Description

@dfrysinger

Summary

/compact is currently a user-only slash command. The agent itself should be able to invoke compaction when it detects it's running short on context or when a long task naturally hits a phase boundary.

Use cases

  • Multi-phase workflows (e.g. plan → implement → review pipelines) where the agent knows when a phase is complete and the prior context can be safely summarized.
  • Long-running autonomous sessions where the user isn't present to trigger /compact manually.
  • Skill / plugin authors who want to script a compaction step at a known-safe boundary.

Proposal

Expose /compact as a callable tool (e.g. compact_context) so the agent can invoke it programmatically, with the same effect as the user typing the slash command. Permission-gate it the same way other state-changing tools are gated.

Out of scope

Auto-compaction policy (when to fire, what to summarize) is separate; this issue is only about exposing the existing capability to the agent.

Metadata

Metadata

Assignees

No one assigned

    Labels

    area:agentsSub-agents, fleet, autopilot, plan mode, background agents, and custom agentsarea:context-memoryContext window, memory, compaction, checkpoints, and instruction loading

    Fields

    No fields configured for Feature.

    Projects

    No projects

    Milestone

    No milestone

    Relationships

    None yet

    Development

    No branches or pull requests

    Issue actions