Claude Code: When Should You Start a Fresh Session Instead of Relying on Compaction?
TestBusi · reddit · 2026-10-04
A Reddit user shares their Claude Code workflow: long-running conversations get auto-compacted, and after every important change they ask Claude to update project docs to preserve key context and decisions.
Their question: even with compaction and up-to-date docs, is periodically starting a fresh session still recommended? The discussion highlights a real trade-off in agent context management — compaction only summarizes rather than fully remembering, and stale noise in long sessions can degrade output quality, which is why many practitioners restart sessions and lean on written handoff docs.
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