A conversation history is growing close to the context window limit. What is a common strategy to continue the conversation without losing important context?
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Short Explanation and Infographic
The conversation compression trick: have Claude summarize what's happened so far, replace the long history with a compact summary + recent messages, and keep going under budget.
Full explanation below image
Full Explanation
Progressive summarization is a standard pattern for managing growing conversation contexts. When approaching the context limit: (1) have Claude generate a concise summary of key information from the conversation so far, (2) replace the full conversation history in the messages array with this summary (as a system prompt addition or assistant message), (3) keep only the most recent few exchanges, (4) continue the conversation. This preserves important information while dramatically reducing token usage. Option A (auto-truncation) doesn't happen automatically — the API returns an error if the context is exceeded. Option C (premium subscription) is fictional. Option D (infinite context) doesn't exist.