# Manage Long Conversations


A long session fills the model's context window. kli summarizes older history to make room, on demand or automatically, and keeps the recent part of the conversation intact. Compact when you want, let kli compact on its own near the limit, and label a session so you can find it later.

## Compact the session now

Run `/compact` to summarize the conversation's older history immediately:

```
/compact
```

kli runs one summarizer model call over everything except the most recent turns, replaces that history with a structured summary, and keeps the recent turns verbatim. The summary records the goal, constraints, progress, key decisions, next steps, and critical context (file paths, function names, error messages), so the agent continues from a checkpoint rather than from raw transcript.

Compact when the session is idle. If a turn is still running, the command reports that the session is busy; wait for the turn to finish and run it again. When there is nothing older than the recent window to summarize, `/compact` reports that there is nothing to compact.

## Focus the summary

Pass a tail to `/compact` to add a focus line to the summarizer's instructions:

```
/compact keep the database migration details and drop the UI styling discussion
```

The focus rides along with the standard summary format. Use it when one thread of the conversation matters more than the rest and you want the summary to preserve it.

## Let kli compact automatically

You do not have to run `/compact` yourself. At the end of each turn, kli checks token usage against the context window. When usage reaches a configured fraction of the model's context window, kli compacts on its own: it keeps the recent tokens and summarizes everything older, the same operation `/compact` performs.

Automatic compaction stays quiet when there is nothing older than the recent window to summarize. A manual `/compact` is the way to summarize before the threshold, for instance right before handing the session a large new task.

To see current usage at any time, run `/session`, which prints the active session's id, file, model, and token count.

## Name the session

Run `/name` with a label to set the session's display name:

```
/name fourier-series refactor
```

The name is written to the session header and persists to disk, so it identifies the session in `/resume` and `/branches` listings. Run `/name` with no argument to print the current name, or report that none is set.

## Related

- [Sessions](/kli/concepts/sessions-as-a-tree) — what a session is and how it is stored
- [The Agent Loop](/kli/concepts/the-agent-loop) — how a turn runs and when usage is measured
- [Session Commands](/kli/commands/slash-commands) — the full reference for `/compact`, `/name`, `/session`, `/resume`, and `/rewind`