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> /clear + /catchup (Simple Restart): My default reboot. I /clear the state, then run a custom /catchup command to make Claude read all changed files in my git branch.

I've found myself doing similar workarounds. I'm guessing anthropic will just make the /compact command do this instead soon enough.

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I've found the latency of /compact makes it unusable. Perhaps this is just the result of my waiting until I have 0% context remaining.

Fun fact, a large chunk of context is reserved for compaction. When you are shown that you have "0% context remaining," it's actually like 30% remaining that's reserved for compaction.

And yet, for some reason I feel like 50% of the time, compaction fails because it runs out of context or hits (non-rate) API limits.

The old rule of thumb is that when you compact, you've already lost.

Weirdly, I’ve found that when that happens I can close Claude and then run `claude --continue` and now it has room to compact. Makes no sense.

But I have no idea what state it will be in after compact, so it’s better to ask it to write a complete and thorough report including what source files to read. Lot more work but better than going off the rails.

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