compress.
Fewer tokens, in and out. Without losing the load-bearing context.
Token diet, semantically aware.
Long sessions accrete weight: stale tool output, half-typed plans, repeated file dumps. Compress walks the conversation and rewrites it down to the parts the model actually needs to keep going.
Compress is a turn-level pass. It distinguishes load-bearing spans (decisions, current diff, open spec) from scaffolding (raw file dumps, tool retries, model thinking out loud). Scaffolding gets distilled. Decisions get preserved verbatim and indexed in recall.
A 14-turn session in super-ultra rides at 30–40% of the unmodified token cost, with no measurable drop in code quality.
Lossless on decisions.
Anything that affected a diff is preserved verbatim and re-anchored into recall — never paraphrased away.
Distilled on scaffolding.
Tool retries, raw file dumps, the model's thinking aloud — collapsed into a one-line summary the agent can still reference.
Mode-driven aggressiveness.
lite trims, strict folds more aggressively, ultra condenses prior turns, super-ultra re-summarises and extracts decisions.
Reversible, always.
The full transcript is kept on disk in .pakka/. Restore any turn from the raw JSONL store — useful for debugging or audit.
Four dials. Pick once.
Mode is a session-level knob. Default is super-ultra. Switch with /pakka:compress <level>.
Minimal compression. Trims obvious noise — repeated preambles, stale greetings. Good for very short sessions where you want near-zero behavioural change.
Trims redundant tool output and stale file reads. The conservative default for short sessions where you want zero behavioural change.
Adds turn-level summarization for prior tool calls and folds repeated file reads. Recommended for sessions over six turns.
Aggressive: prior-turn re-summarization, decision-grade extraction to recall, scoped tool-output retention. The shipping default.
Same turn. Different weight.
A real turn from the rate-limit engagement, captured before/after compress. Tool output trimmed; decisions preserved verbatim and indexed.