you're running /compact every 10 minutes to fix a problem that disappears the second you give Claude one job instead of five. Anthropic shipped a clean 4-minute video on context management. /compact when the window fills up. /clear to reset. small files over big files. the practical tips work. the video covers the cleanup. it doesn't cover why your window keeps filling up in the first place, and the answer is usually that you're holding too many jobs in one prompt. look at what most people put in a single Claude call: > guess the right answer > choose between options > set the position size > watch the exit window > read the news for sentiment five tools' worth of state in one conversation. of course the window fills. i ran into this on a Polymarket bot: the prediction-layer version ate context constantly. /compact every 8-10 turns. i thought i needed better memory hygiene. i needed fewer jobs per call. i stripped the prompt down to one job: veto an entry i had already decided to take. the context window stopped filling. /compact went from every 8 turns to once a session, if ever. over 90 days that prompt blocked 128 trades. watch the 4 min, then ask why your window keeps needing it. clean context. lean prompt. nothing to compact.