Compaction & Cache

Keep long sessions focused and prompt-cache reuse high.

Long sessions accumulate context. BudgetAI compacts older turns into summaries while preserving recent task state, so prompts stay focused and cheap.

Compaction lifecycle

  1. As a session grows, older turns are summarized.
  2. Recent task state and the active workstream are preserved verbatim.
  3. Compaction events are reported so you can see when and why it happened.

Prompt-cache continuity

BudgetAI orders context to maximize provider prompt-cache reuse across turns. The router guardrails (anti-downgrade, sticky tier) also protect cache continuity by avoiding needless model switches mid-workstream.

Combined with tool compression, compaction keeps even multi-hour sessions inside a small, cache-friendly context window.