---
title: "Auto Compact"
sidebarTitle: "Auto Compact"
description: "Automatic context summarization to keep working when approaching context limits."
---

When your conversation approaches the model's context window limit, Cline automatically summarizes it to free up space and keep working.

<Frame>
	<img
		src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cline_public_images/docs/assets/condensing.png"
		alt="Auto-compact condensing conversation context"
	/>
</Frame>

## How It Works

Cline monitors token usage during your conversation. When you're getting close to the limit, it:

1. Creates a comprehensive summary of everything that's happened
2. Preserves all technical details, code changes, and decisions
3. Replaces the conversation history with the summary
4. Continues exactly where it left off

You'll see a summarization tool call when this happens, showing the cost like any other API call.

## Why This Matters

Previously, Cline would truncate older messages when hitting context limits, losing important context.

Now with summarization:
- All technical decisions and code patterns are preserved
- File changes and project context remain intact
- Cline remembers everything it's done
- You can work on much larger projects without interruption

<Tip>
Auto Compact works especially well for long-running tasks. Structured task lists can help maintain progress across summarizations so Cline can stay on track across multiple context windows.
</Tip>

## Cost Considerations

Summarization leverages your existing prompt cache from the conversation, so it costs about the same as any other tool call.

Since most input tokens are already cached, you're primarily paying for summary generation (output tokens), making it cost-effective.

<Note>
With other models, Cline falls back to standard rule-based context truncation, even if Auto Compact is enabled.
</Note>

## Restoring Context

You can use [checkpoints](/core-workflows/checkpoints) to restore your task state from before a summarization occurred. You never truly lose context since you can always roll back.

Editing a message before a summarization tool call works similarly, restoring the conversation to that point.
