Context Management

Manage your context window, survive compaction, persist state across turns.

<when_to_use>

• Planning long-running or multi-step tasks
• Coordinating multiple subagents
• Approaching context limits (degraded responses, repetition)
• Need to preserve state across compaction or sessions
• Orchestrating complex workflows with handoffs

NOT for: simple single-turn tasks, quick Q&A, tasks completing in one response

</when_to_use>

Claude Code operates in a ~128K token context window that compacts automatically as it fills. When compaction happens: