Compaction notice

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Open

html

<!-- @aparte/plugin-compaction writes this message when the context fills up; any message
     with compaction: true is drawn the same way. -->
<aparte-chat-viewport style="height: 24rem"></aparte-chat-viewport>

<script>
  // A restored conversation: the summary, then the reply that was kept as it was.
  document.querySelector('aparte-chat-viewport').setMessages([
    {
      id: 'c1', role: 'user', compaction: true, timestamp: Date.now(),
      content: '**Conversation summary**\n\nThe user is preparing release 0.19.2: two CSS fixes (the sidebar drawer, the menu check mark) and gzip on the docs server. The changelog is written; the tag is not pushed yet.',
    },
    { id: 'a9', role: 'assistant', content: 'The changelog is in. What is left: wait for CI on the release commit, then push the tag alone.', timestamp: Date.now() },
  ]);
</script>

A conversation can outgrow the model’s context window. Rather than failing, or silently dropping the start, @aparte/plugin-compaction asks the model to summarise the oldest turns and puts that summary in their place, keeping the recent turns as they were. The summary is shown as a notice: centred, with a dashed border, and no avatar, name, time or actions, because nobody said it.

The notice is a message with compaction: true. Its title comes from the compactionSummaryTitle locale key (“Conversation summary”). It is sent to the model as context from the user, introduced as a summary, since some providers refuse a system message in the middle of a conversation.

Usage

ts

import { setupCompaction } from '@aparte/plugin-compaction';

setupCompaction(); // the global config, the current model's window

html

<aparte-composer-toolbar>
  <aparte-context variant="ring" auto-compact></aparte-context>
</aparte-composer-toolbar>

With the context gauge’s auto-compact, compaction starts when the gauge reaches danger; the plugin can also be called on demand. How much it keeps, how it summarises and the events it fires are on Long conversations.

A conversation you restore keeps its notice like any other message: compaction: true is part of the message, so it is saved and drawn the same way.

Customize

The notice is the message’s bubble with data-kind="compaction", so a selector on aparte-chat-bubble[data-kind="compaction"] restyles it. Its text is the summary, rendered as Markdown when a renderer is installed.

Accessibility

• The notice is a message like the others in the transcript, read in order; its title says what it is before the summary.

Related

• Context gauge — what triggers it.
• Message — the bubble it is drawn in.