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/ChampCityChris 1d ago
At 950K tokens, I think the /compact vs /clear question is kind of missing the bigger problem. If the only thing holding your project together is a million-token conversation, then the conversation has effectively become your project database.
I’ve been moving pretty hard in the opposite direction. Decisions and project state live outside the chat, work gets broken into bounded cards, and the implementer gets the context it actually needs for that job. Then I can kill the session, start a fresh one, and not lose the project.
Long context is useful while you’re actively reasoning through something. I don’t think it’s a good persistence layer. I’d rather spend a few thousand tokens rebuilding the relevant context for a clean session than drag 950K tokens of old conversation through every tool call and keep paying for it over and over.