Use /compact to Summarise Long Conversations

Long sessions accumulate a lot of back-and-forth that quietly eats into your context window. The /compact command lets Claude summarise everything so far and carry on — without dragging every intermediate step along for the ride.

/compact

When you run /compact, Claude Code condenses the full conversation history into a tight briefing and replaces it in place. You keep the important context — decisions made, files touched, goals established — but shed all the noise.

This is especially handy when:

• You've been debugging for a while and the thread is getting unwieldy
• You want to pivot to a new sub-task within the same session
• You're approaching context limits and don't want to lose your momentum by starting over

You can also pass a custom instruction to control what gets prioritised in the summary:

/compact Focus on the API refactoring we completed; ignore the earlier CSS discussion

Claude will tailor the summary accordingly, so the next steps start with exactly the context that matters.

When in doubt, /compact rather than starting fresh — you keep your momentum without the context baggage weighing you down.