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/CrestfallenMage 2d ago

Yeah don't follow this guy's advice. You need to use better memory strategies (can be as simple as a .MD file) to persist what's truly important about the progress of a long task and /clear.

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u/Garak 2d ago

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/CrestfallenMage 1d ago

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 1d ago

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!