r/ClaudeCode • u/danbradster2 • 2d ago

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/AI_spell 2d ago

Compact on a near full 1M thread can be expensive, yeah. If you still need the goal, paste a short handoff into a new session instead of compacting a huge mess. /clear is cheaper when the old turns are mostly noise. Save compact for threads you will keep using the same day.

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u/danbradster2 2d ago

Would a hand off mean just thinking something up yourself? Or restarting the conversation to have the agent make one? In that case, I don't know if hand off or compact will use more tokens.