Conversation context is the Agent’s short-term memory, containing all messages in the current session (user input, Agent replies, tool calls and results). Proper context management is critical for the Agent’s reasoning quality and cost control.
Context Structure
Each conversation turn consists of:
User message → Agent thinking → Tool call → Tool result → ... → Agent final reply
agent_max_steps). All tool calls and results are retained in context until compressed or trimmed.
Key Configuration
| Parameter | Description | Default |
|---|
agent_max_context_tokens | Maximum context token budget | 50000 |
agent_max_context_turns | Maximum conversation turns in context | 20 |
agent_max_steps | Maximum decision steps per turn (tool call count) | 15 |
config.json or the /config chat command.
Compression Strategy
When context exceeds limits, the system automatically compresses to free space. The process has multiple stages:
Before each decision loop, the system checks tool call results in historical turns. Results exceeding 20,000 characters are truncated, keeping only the beginning and end with a truncation notice. Current turn results are not affected.
2. Turn Trimming
When conversation turns exceed agent_max_context_turns:
- The oldest half of complete turns is trimmed (preserving tool call chain integrity)
- Trimmed messages are summarized by LLM and written to the daily memory file
- Remaining turns stay intact
3. Token Budget Trimming
After turn trimming, if tokens still exceed the budget:
- Fewer than 5 turns: All turns undergo text compression — each turn keeps only the first user text and last Agent reply, removing intermediate tool call chains
- 5 or more turns: The first half of turns is trimmed again, with discarded content also written to memory
4. Overflow Emergency Handling
When the model API returns a context overflow error:
- All current messages are summarized and written to memory
- Aggressive trimming is applied (tool results limited to 10K chars, user text to 10K, max 5 turns)
- If still overflowing, the entire conversation context is cleared
Session Persistence
Conversation messages are persisted to a local database, automatically restored after service restart. Restore strategy:
- Restores the most recent
max(3, max_context_turns / 6) turns
- Only retains each turn’s user text and Agent final reply, not intermediate tool call chains
- Sessions older than 30 days are automatically cleaned up
Commands
Use these commands in chat to manage context:
| Command | Description |
|---|
/context | View current context statistics (message count, role distribution, total characters) |
/context clear | Clear current session context |
/config agent_max_context_tokens 80000 | Adjust context token budget |
/config agent_max_context_turns 30 | Adjust context turn limit |
After clearing context, the Agent “forgets” previous conversation content. Content that was already written to long-term memory can still be retrieved via memory search.
