[FEATURE] Graceful Context Exhaustion Recovery / State Handoff Summary

Preflight Checklist

• [x] I have searched existing requests and this feature hasn't been requested yet
• [x] This is a single feature request (not multiple features)

Problem Statement

When using Claude Code for long-running tasks, the context often needs to be compressed. However, there are times when the conversation history is compressed so many times that it reaches a limit where it can no longer be compressed effectively. When this happens, the session essentially becomes void or stuck, and there is no mechanism to continue the current workflow.

The core frustration isn't just that the context window is limited—it's that the user suddenly loses track of the task's progress. I don't know exactly what has been completed, what the immediate next step was, and all the momentum is lost.

Proposed Solution

Instead of a hard failure or a voided session when the compression limit is reached, I propose a "State Handoff" or "Graceful Degradation" mechanism.

When Claude Code detects that it can no longer compress the context without breaking the session, it should generate a "Lossy State Summary" (有损压缩文案) before exiting. This summary should include:

Original Goal: A brief reminder of the overarching task.

Completed Milestones: What has been successfully done so far.

Current Blockers/State: Where exactly the process got stuck.

Pending Next Steps: What the agent was planning to do next.

Even if this summary loses a lot of detailed context (lossy compression), it should be outputted to the user (e.g., printed in the terminal or saved as a handoff.md file). The user can then manually review, edit, or append this summary, and use it as the initial prompt to open a new session and resume the task.

Alternative Solutions

Some might argue that outputting a "lossy" summary is a bad idea because it inevitably misses crucial information, leading to hallucinations in the next session. However, keeping the user "in the loop" is far better than a total session crash. Users are capable of reading a lossy summary, manually fixing the missing pieces, and restarting the engine.

Priority

High - Significant impact on productivity

Feature Category

API and model interactions

Use Case Example

I am using Claude Code to refactor a large project. After a long chain of automated edits, the context window fills up and compression fails. Currently, the session becomes unusable and I lose track of the progress.
With this feature, Claude would detect the impending limit and output a "Lossy State Summary" (e.g., "Completed: modules A & B. Current focus: module C. Next step: update tests"). I can then take this summary, open a fresh Claude Code terminal, paste it as the initial prompt, and seamlessly resume the refactoring process without starting from scratch.

Additional Context

Implementing this would significantly improve the UX. It shifts the user's perception from "The tool crashed and failed my task" to "The tool reached its memory limit but cleanly handed the task back to me to continue."