Claude Code: Faster /compact with Targeted Instructions

The bare /compact command compresses your conversation but reads everything first—tool output, file contents, web fetches, search results. That takes minutes and often loses important context.

The fix: tell it what to keep

Create ~/.claude/commands/compact-guide.md with one line:

/compact Focus on: current task, file paths modified, decisions made, user preferences stated. Drop: tool output, search results, web content, file contents already acted on.

Now /compact-guide expands to the full instruction automatically.

Why not compact.md? Claude Code has a built-in /compact command that triggers actual context compression. A custom compact.md overrides it—your instructions expand but compression never happens. Use a different name like compact-guide.md so both work.

Why it's faster

A typical session context breakdown:

Content type	Share of tokens
Tool output (bash, file reads)	~50–60%
Web fetches, search results	~15–20%
Actual conversation + decisions	~15–20%
File contents already acted on	~10%

Without instructions, /compact reads all of it before writing the summary. With instructions, it skips 70–80% of the tokens entirely—only extracting the small slice that matters going forward.

Result: seconds instead of minutes, and a leaner summary with more headroom.

Customize for your workflow

Adjust the keep/drop lists to match what you need:

/compact Focus on: current task, file paths modified, decisions made, user preferences stated, open questions. Drop: tool output, search results, web content, file contents already acted on, error messages that were resolved.