daseinlabs/parsec/trim

Follow these steps in order. Every number you report from step 1 is an ESTIMATE (chars/4) — always say "estimated", never present it as measured.

If the parsec MCP tools trim_stage and trim_finalize are available, use them instead of the shell commands below: trim_stage (optionally with level) replaces step 1 and trim_finalize (directives as the argument) replaces step 3 — no heredoc needed. Everything else is unchanged.

1. Run "${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/bin/parsec" trim --json.

• If the user asked for a specific trim aggressiveness, add --level N

(1 = low trimming / keep more, 5 = very high). Omit it otherwise — the default (3) is the only measured configuration; the other levels shift what counts as "used later" and are estimates all the way down.

• Exit code 2 means the session is too short to trim (or no transcript was

found) — relay the binary's message plainly and stop.

• Otherwise present the stats conversationally: kept X of Y chunks,

roughly A of B estimated tokens. This is the deterministic trim — the parts of this session that were actually re-read, edited, or used later.

1. Now write the STANDING DIRECTIVES block from your own in-context history.

You are the compaction assistant here; the history is already in your context. Your job is NOT to summarize the work. Extract ONLY the STANDING DIRECTIVES: durable rulings, policies, quantitative floors, model/tool choices, scope decisions, and the north-star — the things the user established that must keep governing behavior AFTER compaction. Exclude one-off task steps and transient state. Output a terse pinned-constraints list, each line an imperative the agent must keep obeying. If a directive was stated with force or repeated, keep its force. Keep the list under roughly 3,000 tokens.

1. Stage the directives (heredoc keeps the artifact on disk complete before

anything else happens):

`` "${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/bin/parsec" trim --finalize <<'PARSEC_DIRECTIVES' <the directives list> PARSEC_DIRECTIVES ``

1. When the binary prints ready, tell the user: run /clear now — the next

session in this project starts with the trimmed context injected automatically. Mention it expires unused after 30 minutes, and that it fires on /clear (or a fresh start), not on resume.

1. If step 3 fails for any reason, say so plainly and tell the user the

deterministic trim alone is still staged and will be injected without the directives block after /clear (that is the designed fallback, not an error state).

Never estimate savings the ledger does not show, and never run /clear yourself — the user decides when the session ends.