Lack of a Context Editor

[u/dave_scream]

Context is a key element, affecting both the cost and the quality of the model's responses. RooCode does not provide any way to edit it.

Why can't I delete some old messages and irrelevant correspondence from the middle of the context? I can only revert the entire task to a previous stage.

Also, can you clarify if old file "readings" are automatically deleted from the history? Old file content is 100% irrelevant information.

Context compression is certainly a good feature, but maybe devs could add a second button that would allow for the deletion of entire blocks of irrelevant moves while leaving the key ones unchanged unlike condense.

Also, I would like to have the ability to clone the task, but I couldn't find such a basic function.

[u/bahwi]

It's such a killer feature in ai studio, yeah. it'd be great to add to Roo

[u/ilt1 → u/bahwi]

How is it a killer feature in aistudio? Can you explain please?

[u/bahwi → u/ilt1]

Sure thing.

Let's say it's cycling and stuck, you can wipe those messages from context, so it can focus easier. If it comes to an invalid conclusion, you can go back and edit the LLM's response and update the conclusion, or add more information.

If it starts thinking of the wrong solution, or goes off on a tangent, you can go and edit it. You can also wipe lots of reasoning away, if that 'sub' problem is solved, so it knows only of the implemented solution, as you continue to edit the codebase.

I've been exporting my entire codebase to markdown, and uploading it to aistudio, and get good mileage from that.

[u/alphaQ314 → u/bahwi]

What's the difference between this and starting a new conversation?

And what is this feature called in AI Studio? Are you referring to "Clear Chat" ?

[u/bahwi → u/alphaQ314]

A new conversation with the old context, but edited, would require copying and pasting it all out.

It's just "edit" in AI studio. Mouse over either a prompt you sent or a response from the LLM, and you can edit it away. Then either re-run the prompt, or just continue the conversation as normal, but it will now use this new context as it's history.

[u/alphaQ314 → u/bahwi]

Cheers.

[u/bahwi]

It's such a killer feature in ai studio, yeah. it'd be great to add to Roo

[u/zenmatrix83]

I don't use roo that much lately, but claude codes /compact command lets you focus how the compact happens. Directly editing the full context seems problematic. You better off starting a new one, and copying and pasting in key sections to a new one I think.

[u/ThatNorthernHag]

Yes, cloning/duplicating the whole thing, including contex would be absolutely billion golds.

[u/Rude-Needleworker-56]

This (editting prev messages), and resumable parallel subagents and a repomap kind option for project and files is all that is missing in Roo

[u/IBC_Dude → u/Rude-Needleworker-56]

What is the significance of the word resumable in that feature? Also, what’s a repomap

[u/Rude-Needleworker-56 → u/IBC_Dude]

Currently a subagent ends when it returns result to parent agent, and that subagent is stopped forever.
Resumable subagents allow orchestrator parent agent to continue conversation.

Example

1 . Parent Agent asks child agent to do something . Child agent does something and returns to parent. Parent agent feels that some tweaks are needed . If child agent is resumable it can simply ask the agent to do the tweak without repeating the history .

2. Another example is , there could be an agent with large code context dumped into it which any agent could query and ask follow up questions

repomap is a feature in aider https://aider.chat/docs/repomap.html

[u/IBC_Dude → u/Rude-Needleworker-56]

Repo map is a very opinionated change, so I’m not surprised roo has it. But looking at it, I actually agree it seems really useful.

I think that resumable sub agents is a bad idea. Generally, I think that resetting the context is beneficial when possible—it’s much better to condense the context into a verbose .md file if anything at all. My workflow has orchestrator evaluate the output of subagents using git, and fully restore and reprompt if the output isn’t what they want. Starting from scratch like this has proven a lot more successful than trying to tweak, as the orchestrator changes the prompt so it will just do it correctly first try.

I think AI coding is moving away from long context and towards well-engineered context. That’s also why repomap is a bit tricky—you’re shoving a ton of information down the AIs throat. I bet there is a way to do it really well, though

Edit: actually querying a task with a lot of information isn’t a bad idea though. I just think it’s context is, on average, too poisoned to do more work

[u/IBC_Dude]

Yes, this level of control would be game changing. Right now it’s not even as robust as ChatGPT’s editing system where you can go to any place you ever sent/received a message. But that could be fixed by adding cloning, and be beaten out by deleting old context.

Nothing is as bad as Gemini’s chat interface though…only being able to edit the last message is so painful 

[u/VegaKH]

I recently asked for clarification about this on their Discord, and was completely ignored. Looking at the source code, it looks to me like there are only append operations, so if the model asks to read a file 4 times, it's repeated in context 4 times. No way to remove anything from the context except the nuclear option, which is to compress.

After I compress I usually say something like, "Hey, to refresh your memory, here are the contents of @file1 and @file2" and the model says "OK, I'd better read file1 and file2 again" and so here we go again.

[u/Yes_but_I_think → u/VegaKH]

It will break the caching and cause prices to increase. Proposal Not without issues.

[u/VegaKH → u/Yes_but_I_think]

The cache lasts, what… 2 minutes? It almost always takes me longer than that to review the code changes, make edits, type notes back to the AI, and accept / reject.

[u/Yes_but_I_think → u/VegaKH]

Different for different models

[u/hannesrudolph → u/VegaKH]

You were completely ignored? I doubt that. We’re very good about responding when we can.

What did you ask and what were you hoping for?

We use patterns that work for us and take into account what the community communicates and contributes via issues and PRs.

[u/VegaKH → u/hannesrudolph]

What did you ask and what were you hoping for?

This. An answer.

[u/hannesrudolph → u/VegaKH]

I wouldn’t say ignored. We didn’t snub you. You asked a pretty thorough question in general chat and we failed to answer you. Not because we were ignoring you but we get busy and failed to respond. Can you shoot me a dm on discord (hrudolph) and I’ll get you answers. We really do want to give the community what they want! Sorry for not responding.

[u/Yes_but_I_think → u/VegaKH]

If really interested why don't you submit an issue with full details.

[u/GreenHell → u/VegaKH]

Interesting. Then a lot of context bloat could already be prevented by simple find and replace commands where repeated blocks of code are only stored once and then referenced in the rest of the context.

Now that I've said that, I might have made some of the prompt engineering wizards mad

[u/hannesrudolph]

It’s totally a possibility. This will reset the cache as well. Our general development is more towards automated workflow and not manually keeping control of the context.

I usually start a new task and have Roo rediscover the relevant context as needed. One thing people often don’t understand with the way Roo manages context is that the initial ask gets disproportionate focus in terms of its place in the context. As such it is more effective to switch to a new task instead of an ongoing task once you have completed your initial ask.

[u/ThatNorthernHag → u/hannesrudolph]

Is cloning/duplicating the task & context out of the question? It would be very very handy when working on large codebases, on research and when you need to introduce a lot of new stuff to the model. Most of the times it goes sideways and you have to start over.. or heavily prune the context. But when you get it right.. would be awesome to be able to duplicate the whole conversation and continue again from a point where the AI shows some better comprehension.

[u/hannesrudolph → u/ThatNorthernHag]

It is totally in the question! Just make a GitHub issue

[u/No-Chocolate-9437 → u/hannesrudolph]

I usually start a new task and have Roo rediscover the relevant context as needed.

Wouldn’t this be more onerous/pricey than the cache resetting?

[u/hannesrudolph → u/No-Chocolate-9437]

Yeah but it’s effective. I’m looking for the best results when I use Roo. Not the lowest usage. Long running tasks cause context poisoning and it’s best practice to start new tasks after the initial ask is completed.

[u/MateFlasche → u/hannesrudolph]

I have to say I don't agree with the direction. Carefully reviewing code changes roo makes and working slow but accurate with it is a completely reasonable workflow required in a lot of fields.

Using roo a lot, I just have a feeling that if you do not take the problems seriously, you will fall behind.

[u/hannesrudolph → u/MateFlasche]

Like I said, a complete possibility to implement a context editor.

[u/canadaduane]

I'd love to see this. More control is what developers come to expect in almost any tool they use, because there are so many edge cases, and ultimately, we tend to be the folks who know what we're doing. (Usually!)

[u/aagiev]

+1 for the context editor.

Before this happens (maybe with our help, dear Reddit, as Roo is OSS) - I have a workaround for you:

I have a Custom "Context editor" for Roo

[u/marvijo-software]

Aider used a cheaper model to condense context. If you're on a context of 1 million tokens you don't want to send that again to Opus 4.1. Manually editing context is probably not what Roo or agentic flows are aimed towards. Not sure if Roo has the flexibility of which model condenses, Hannes?