Why it matters

Long conversations are common. Compression enables them. Understanding shapes long-conversation apps.

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The architecture

Recent turns: full text.

Older turns: summarized by LLM.

Very old: dropped or archived.

Context compression tiersRecent turnsverbatimOlder turnssummarizedVery olddropped / archivedSliding window vs progressive summarization; combine both
Compression strategies.
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How it works end to end

Sliding window: fixed N recent turns; drop older.

Progressive summarization: summarize when approaching limit.

Semantic memory: extract facts to long-term store.

Trade-off: freshness vs context.