Hey, I’m new to Claude. Please help me understand the difference between the two approaches, and when to use what. I’m wondering whether I even need /clear at all, if /compact actually covers everything? But I have a few doubts about it So far, what I found out about /compact CONS: You can read a summary of the compact, but you can’t edit it (?) I heard from Matt Pocock’s course that: Compact leaves “sediment” each time you use it, which bloats the context window 1 by 1, and you need to do /clear after a few sessions of compacting. Is this true? I couldn’t find any confirmation of this Compact is not good for autonomous agents, as it can remove something important /clear CONS: Adds extra friction of saving the summary to an extra file, reviewing it, and then spinning up a new context window again and again Is that all true? Maybe I missed something? What do you usually use and how? submitted by /u/lifeformwp
Originally posted by u/lifeformwp on r/ClaudeCode