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Pre-Compress
/pre-compress
Automatic checkpointing and compaction of working state before the context window truncates or a long session is compacted.
Strata: L2, L4
Axes: Knowledge, Orchestration
Status: seed
Explainer
Pre-Compress is the lifecycle stage that runs before the active context window overflows, a conversation is compacted, or a handoff occurs. Its purpose is to distill the current session into a smaller durable representation: checkpoint critical state, summarize recent decisions, and write the compressed result somewhere the next turn can recover it. Without pre-compress, the agent loses hard-won context at exactly the moment the session becomes most complex. It is the memory equivalent of saving your work before the power flickers.
Anti-Patterns
- Waiting until the context window is already full and then truncating blindly destroys state that should have been checkpointed or compressed first.
Mitigations
- Trigger compaction before truncation boundaries. Summarize the recent session, checkpoint critical state, and persist the compressed representation for the next turn or thread.