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2026-04-16 07:36
Context Compaction: Three Layers of Compression That Let an Agent Run Indefinitely
Our agent has come a long way. It runs commands, reads and writes files, tracks its own work, delegates to subagents, and loads skills on demand — seven tools, one loop. But every one of those capabilities adds to the same growing resource: the messages array. A single read_file on a 1,000-line source file costs roughly 4,000 tokens. Load a skill body, and that's another 2,000. After reading 30 fi...
