[BUG] Error during compaction

[mtaksa]

Preflight Checklist

• I have searched existing issues and this hasn't been reported yet
• This is a single bug report (please file separate reports for different bugs)
• I am using the latest version of Claude Code

What's Wrong?

The /compact command fails with an error message stating "Conversation too long. Press esc twice to go up a few messages and try again." This prevents users from compacting their conversation history when the conversation becomes lengthy.

What Should Happen?

The /compact command should successfully compress the conversation history regardless of length, summarizing previous messages while preserving important context. Users should be able to compact conversations of any reasonable size to manage token usage and maintain conversation continuity.

Error Messages/Logs

Steps to Reproduce

1. Start a new conversation in Claude Code
2. Have an extended conversation with multiple tool calls, file reads, and edits (likely 50+ messages)
3. Run the /compact command
4. Observe the error: "Error during compaction:Error: Conversation too long. Press esc twice to go up a few messages and try again."

Claude Model

None

Is this a regression?

Yes, this worked in a previous version

Last Working Version

No response

Claude Code Version

1.0.111

Platform

Anthropic API

Operating System

macOS

Terminal/Shell

Terminal.app (macOS)

Additional Information

No response

[PabloLION]

I see this too in the recent days. a lot of failures on /compact even when I'm at 25% (barely have no dialogue)

[OMorris95]

This has also been happening to me a lot recently. Pressing esc twice and going back messages also doesn't help and attempting to compact still brings the same error.

[PabloLION]

Pressing esc twice and going back messages also doesn't help

I forgot this part. It happens more than 80% of the time. And when it happens, even I retry multiple times it still doesn't work.

And I also observed: when the context goes out of length, it seems a force /clear will happen, and we will be thrown to a new session, losing all the access to the old chat history. I know it stored somewhere in my file system, but it's not in the TUI.

[TUstudents]

I can confirm this bug in 1.0.111

[cahaseler]

Also seeing this issue on almost any manual compact, if I then add tons more context to force it to auto-compact at 100% of context, it works just fine. So clearly the issue isn't actually too many messages.

[leichti]

Can confirm that as well. See it since a few days quite often, but seems to not effect the automatic compact

[OMorris95]

Haven't experienced the issue today, but when I was experiencing it, it was also affecting the auto compact. Currently on v1.0.113, not sure what version I was on when I had the issue yesterday.

[PabloLION]

On my side it's also fixed. Guess we can close now.
It seems that in the new /compact does clear the history visually. Bugs are introduced in the implementation and are fixed now.

[VirtualMaestro]

I got it now.
OS: Win 11
Claude Code: 1.0.113
Terminal: MINGW64 (Git/Bash)