/gaia-compact

name: gaia-compact
description: Use when the user asks to compact the current session, including “compacta”, “compactemos”, or “compact the session”

Gaia Compact

Gaia Compact preserves the small amount of transient context needed to resume work after compaction. Durable decisions and work belong in memory, briefs, plans, tasks, or project context; compact references those objects instead of duplicating their bodies.

Process

1. **Collect user extras.** Preserve any specific item the user names. 2. **Classify what would be lost, by which door you came in.** After a `session-reflection`, every decision, learning, and pending already has a home, so `UNSAVED TRANSIENT CONTEXT` is empty by construction: anything you are tempted to put there names an item the reflection did not finish, and it belongs back in that table rather than in a summary that expires. Arriving standalone with unsaved decisions, learnings, milestones, or Gaia improvements, offer the `session-reflection` → `memory` flow first; if the user insists on compacting now, preserve those items explicitly under that field, labeled as not durable rather than pretending permanence. 3. **Preflight continuity.** Resolve or clearly retain approvals in flight, unpersisted brief/plan changes, verification evidence, and requested git actions. Compaction does not make them durable. 4. **Build the handoff.** Preserve only:

• active objective;
• exact resume point;
• durable references (slugs, brief/plan/task IDs), never their bodies;
• unsaved transient facts;
• blockers and approvals;
• active files needed to resume;
• user-provided preservation instructions.

5. **Invoke `/compact` with that handoff** -- the orchestrator's own action; this skill cannot invoke it.

Preservation prompt

Preserve continuity for the next turn:
- ACTIVE OBJECTIVE: <goal>
- RESUME POINT: <exact next action>
- DURABLE REFERENCES: <memory slugs and brief/plan/task IDs; no copied bodies>
- UNSAVED TRANSIENT CONTEXT: <facts that exist only in this conversation>
- BLOCKERS / APPROVALS: <current state>
- ACTIVE FILES: <only files needed to resume>
- USER EXTRAS: <request-specific instructions, if any>

Compress tool output and intermediate reasoning. Do not duplicate durable
memory or structured work; retain identifiers and the next decision.

Handoffs

• `session-reflection` supplies the resume point, not the handoff; compact

builds its own from that pointer and from the session's own state.

• `memory` owns durable knowledge and live threads; compact owns transient

conversational continuity only.

• See `examples.md` for chained and standalone compaction.

Anti-patterns

• **Compacting durable candidates silently:** offer reflection and curation

before losing the context that explains them.

• **Copying durable bodies:** duplicates memory and causes later divergence;

preserve identifiers.

• **Inventorying every file read:** retain only active files needed to resume.
• **Treating compaction as persistence:** a summary is context, not a durable

database record.