Agent Compaction Architecture — Production Context Management

New to context management? Read the free primer first: Context Death Spiral Prevention It explains the problem this skill solves and why default OpenClaw setups don't protect you.

What This Skill Does

This skill installs the exact compaction architecture Anthropic runs in production Claude Code. It configures your OpenClaw agent with:

• Empirically validated thresholds — not guessed. These values were measured against real production workloads (p99.99 summary output, circuit breaker failure distribution data).
• 6-condition autocompact gate — prevents premature and thrashing compaction.
• 3-strike circuit breaker — stops infinite compaction loops cold.
• Post-compaction cleanup sequence — verifies compaction actually worked.
• Microcompaction scheduling — handles time-based degradation, not just token count.
• Recursion guards — prevents compacting a compaction summary.
• Summary content structure — specifies what a compaction summary must contain.

Setup

Step 1 — Install

Place this SKILL.md in your OpenClaw skills directory and reload:

mkdir -p ~/.openclaw/workspace/skills/agent-compaction
cp SKILL.md ~/.openclaw/workspace/skills/agent-compaction/

Then reload OpenClaw or restart the gateway.

Step 2 — Configure Thresholds

Add these values to your openclaw.json compaction config:

{
  "compaction": {
    "mode": "safeguard",
    "keepRecentTokens": 200000,
    "reserveTokensFloor": 20000,
    "model": "anthropic/claude-haiku-4-5"
  }
}

These are the production-validated constants. Do not guess alternatives — the values interact, and changing one without adjusting the others breaks the gate logic.

Step 3 — Verify

After 1–2 sessions, check your agent logs for:

• [compaction] autocompact gate evaluated — gate is running
• [compaction] circuit breaker — breaker initialized
• No [compaction] error entries without recovery

If you see [compaction] threshold breach without gate — your OpenClaw version doesn't support the full gate. Check the version requirements below.

Production Thresholds (Exact Values)

These are derived from production Claude Code deployment baselines. The 167k trigger gives enough room for compaction output without hitting the block threshold. The 20k reserve prevents output truncation during compaction.

Architecture Reference

The full behavioral specification is in COMPACTION_ARCHITECTURE.md (included in this package). It covers:

• Section 1: Token threshold management (all 5 values with rationale)
• Section 2: Autocompact gate logic (all 6 conditions)
• Section 3: Circuit breaker specification (3-strike with backoff)
• Section 4: Post-compaction cleanup requirements
• Section 5: Time-based microcompaction
• Section 6: Recursion guard implementation
• Section 7: Summary content structure requirements
• Section 8: Self-audit triggers

Compatibility

• OpenClaw 2026.3.x and above
• Works with: claude-haiku-4-5, claude-sonnet-4-6, claude-opus-4-6
• Recommended compaction model: claude-haiku-4-5 (cost-efficient)

Bundle

This skill is included in the Production Agent Ops — Battle-Tested Architecture Pack along with 6 other production architecture files covering loop termination, session memory, bash security, agent memory scoping, coordinator mode, and forked agent architecture.

If you need all 7 systems, the bundle ($69) costs less than buying them individually.