[BUG] Context loss during conversation compression - 2026-01-26

Incident Report - Context Loss

Date: 2026-01-26 18:09:45
Session ID: 658acffc-2e37-4f23-8fa1-1e8812bffd18
Model: unknown
User: hecdenjean@gmail.com

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Summary

Context compression lost critical work state, caused duplicate product creation and deletion of test data

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Description

During a session working on Dynamo AV products for Odoo 18, the conversation was compressed due to context limits. The compression failed to preserve:

1. Information about products already created (DAV-EC-ALI, DAV-EC-STD, DAV-EC-FULL, etc.)
2. Test orders (S00032-S00035) that validated the complete flow
3. Product configuration (dynamo_is_av_package, includes_reel, includes_realtime)

As a result, Claude:

• Recreated products via XML (causing duplicates)
• Proposed archiving 'duplicates' (which were the originals)
• Deleted test orders and their associated projects/tasks
• Required extensive investigation to verify the original configuration

The user did nothing wrong - this was 100% a system failure in context preservation.

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Impact

• Estimated tokens wasted: ~115,000 tokens
• Time lost: ~2 hours of session time
• Data affected: 17 products archived/deleted, 4 test orders deleted, template lines deleted

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Root Cause (if identified)

Conversation compression did not preserve work-in-progress state or test data context

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Steps to Reproduce

1. Work on complex multi-phase task (creating products, configuring them, testing flow)
2. Continue working until context limit triggers compression
3. After compression, ask about related work (e.g., 'were templates created?')
4. System responds without knowledge of prior work, recreates everything

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Evidence

• Session file: /Users/hecdenjean/.claude/projects/-Users-hecdenjean/658acffc-2e37-4f23-8fa1-1e8812bffd18.jsonl
• Local incident log: /Users/hecdenjean/.claude/incidents/incident_20260126_180945.json

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Request

1. Token reimbursement for ~115,000 tokens wasted
2. Investigation into context compression algorithm
3. Improvement suggestion: Include work-in-progress summary in compression

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This incident was reported automatically via Claude Code incident reporting system.
Report ID: 20260126_180945