Token usage
Context size at each checkpoint
What fills the context (latest checkpoint)
/clear vs /compact experiment
/clear
/compact
All checkpoints
| Time | Phase | Event | Context tokens | Δ since previous | 5-hour plan % | Weekly % |
|---|
Reading this page
Fixed overhead. Tool definitions, the system prompt and skills are loaded every turn, whatever the task. This is the floor that /clear returns you to.
Messages. This grows with every web fetch, file read and test run. Data gathering (web pages) and validation (test output) usually grow it fastest.
/clear vs /compact. /clear drops all messages; the spec files (CLAUDE.md, specs/) let Claude recover the project state from disk. /compact keeps a summary instead, so it costs a summarization pass but keeps more continuity. Log a checkpoint just before and after either one to measure the difference.