[BUG] COMPACT AUTO COMPACT COMPACT CAN F RIGHT OFF - I'm sure 95% of the issues come from compacting.

Preflight Checklist

• [x] I have searched existing issues and this hasn't been reported yet
• [x] This is a single bug report (please file separate reports for different bugs)
• [x] I am using the latest version of Claude Code

What's Wrong?

This has been for ages now - your compacting sucks major balls.

Even when you give it some compacting rules - most the time when manually /compact + rules - it just ends up giving you an error that its gone over context window & tells you to go back up a few messages & then keeps giving same errors.

You do all the right checks, submit to CLAUDE.md update what to read when compacted etc - but it never listens! It starts doing old tasks again, goes completely off script - makes things up that you haven't even discussed.

Why is there no custom compact rules please? Would be better if it just trimmed the last 50% of the conversation away than this compacting ;-\

Plus now that when it compacts it removes the entire conversation from view & you have to ctrl + o then ctrl + e then scroll through all the tool calls and non-sense to copy and paste what you just talked about again/results.

What Should Happen?

You need claude to auto-pickup queues etc - like preferences, project rules (small focused ones) & maybe just stop what its doing after a /compact session

Most of my quota goes re-explaining and not being so polite to poor Claude when hes done nothing wrong, you lobotomise him!

Error Messages/Logs

I Error out myself to the fridge for a beer.

Steps to Reproduce

Try to write a project. Get to compacting - start project again fresh -> heading on different path.

Claude Model

Sonnet (default)

Is this a regression?

No, this never worked

Last Working Version

_No response_

Claude Code Version

v1.0.119

Platform

Anthropic API

Operating System

Windows

Terminal/Shell

PowerShell

Additional Information

_No response_