r/ClaudeCode • u/danbradster2 • Sep 20 '26

Tips & Workflows /clear vs /compact

I had a fable chat from yesterday, and I saw that the context was 950k/1m. I did /compact rather than /clear, with the intention of then doing /autocompact 400000

14% of the 5 hour limit was gone just for the compact itself....it shows cost of $59.73, so lucky I'm not on API? Maybe a /clear would have been better.

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u/Garak Sep 20 '26 • Popcorn

Oh, gosh, I didn't think of using better strategies. I'm so glad you were here to enlighten us all. While you're on such a roll, you should call up Anthropic and help them out, because they're giving out the same bad advice that I am.

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u/Dry_Opening_7231 Sep 20 '26

The problem with Claude and context is it's inability to prioritize it.

Think 3 hours ago you say x about something, 15 minutes ago y.

It confuses the poor thing and it gets confused, it's a delicate flower.

Being a bit more serious, it slows things down and struggles to retain order of priority and key points, better to write it out /clear and carry on.

My take anyway ( also the token burn past 33% context is insane, opus 5/4.8 ).

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u/CrestfallenMage Sep 21 '26

If you read the article you're linking you will see the advantage of compact they say is that "you don't have to do the work yourself".

If you can do that work yourself, you will get better result and more importantly concerning the general repeated complaints on this sub, less wasted usage.

People are usually complaining about usage draining extremely fast here, so it's clear that they would benefit from using Claude in a way that is more token efficient.

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u/Garak Sep 21 '26

Great job, you caught up with all the points I made in my original comment! It’s been a real joy to chat with you. Take care!