Compact Your Context at 60%, Not 95%

Most people let their context window fill to 95% before doing anything about it. By then, Claude is already degrading -- repeating itself, losing earlier context, making avoidable mistakes.

A better approach: check early, act early.

/context    # see exactly where your tokens are going
/compact    # summarise when you hit around 60%
/clear      # wipe completely between unrelated tasks

The 60% threshold is the key insight. At 60%, /compact still captures everything important because Claude has full visibility over the entire session. At 95%, it is doing triage -- and you will feel it in the output quality.

A few habits that compound the benefit:

• Never paste 200+ lines of unrelated code into a prompt -- it silently crowds out your actual task context
• Always /clear when switching between unrelated tasks, even if you are well under the limit
• Run /context before /compact to understand what is eating your tokens, not just how much

The individual commands (/context, /compact, /clear) are quick to learn. The discipline of using them proactively -- before things degrade, not after -- is what actually changes your results. Think of 60% as a maintenance interval, not a warning sign.

Treat context management like memory hygiene: small, regular actions beat emergency cleanup every time.

via @Hartdrawss