When: the conversation has got long and the answers are slipping, but the work is not finished and you don't want to lose what has been built up.
Built from: the context window, /compact, re-alignment.
Instead of pushing on in a full window, ask the AI to do two things.
- Write the current state of understanding to a temporary file: what has been worked out, what is still open, and what matters for where the work is going next.
- Write a short compact message: what to keep, what to let go, and how to pick the work back up.
Then copy that message and run /compact with it pasted in as the instruction. The window shrinks to only what matters. Then ask it to reinitialise from the file, and run re-alignment before continuing.
As a skill: ask the AI to turn this page into a skill. Then one word does all of it.