dsh-context-compaction-optimizer

dsh-context-compaction-optimizer

Mark a conversation turn as invalid so a DSH compaction leaves it out of the checkpoint — without deleting anything from the session.

A compaction summarizes an earlier span of a conversation and replaces it with a checkpoint. Everything in that span is summarized, including the tangents, dead ends and pasted material that were never worth remembering. This plugin lets an operator mark those exchanges, and tells the summarizing model to treat them as if they had never been written.

It works by marking, never deleting. No message is removed, reordered or rewritten, so the provider's prefix cache still hits and a compaction costs approximately what it did before.

---

What it does not promise

Read this before relying on it. These are measured limits, not disclaimers.

• Exclusion is not absolute. The checkpoint is written by a language model following an instruction, and that model sometimes does not comply. In measured runs, a marked turn's content disappeared entirely while an incidental URL survived; in another, an entire marked turn was summarized as if it had not been marked.
• It fails in two shapes, and which one you get is not predictable. Either the exclusion does not run at all — the whole turn is summarized normally (measured on a fixture where the marked content was the conversation's substance) — or it runs and details from the excluded turn still surface. What surfaces varies: the current rendering leaked a single URL domain, while the previous rendering leaked an entire identification on the same fixture (book title, translator, edition, four links). Neither run quoted any prose verbatim.
• So if a turn's conclusion is itself wrong, do not count on exclusion to contain it — the checkpoint can still inherit it.
• The most recent exchange is never summarized. DSH retains the recent context verbatim and never sends it to the summarizer, so marking a turn inside that retained tail has no effect. The panel states this up front and, after a compaction, reports which marks did not take effect.
• Marking changes only what a compaction absorbs. It does not alter when a compaction happens, what range it covers, or the compaction algorithm.

---

Install

dsh plugin --profile 
 add dsh-context-compaction-optimizer

The plugin installs as a real bundle, so it arrives through the package's own cordis.patch.yml. Do not also add a mount row to your profile patch — that loads the host half twice, registers two stream listeners, and injects the digest twice.

Restart the host after installing; the host half is loaded at process start.

---

Using it

Marking

1. The quick action under a reply marks that turn directly.
2. The button in the session header opens the turn list, where any turn can be reviewed and marked. One row per turn; ▸ expands a turn's full step list (read-only).

Triggering

1. Automatic — the marks take effect whenever DSH runs a compaction.
2. Manual — run /cco-compact in the composer, or press Compact now at the bottom of the panel.

Marking itself triggers nothing. Both entry points act on the same unit — the turn — so they cannot disagree.

---

Settings

Under Settings → Plugins → Compaction optimizer.

Setting	Default	Meaning
Inject annotations into compaction	on	Master switch. Off means marking has no effect.
Treat unmarked messages as invalid	off	Applies the exclusion to messages nobody annotated. With this on, a conversation you never annotated excludes everything.
Record cache accounting	off	Keeps token and cache-hit readings per compaction for diagnostics.

One further key is settable in $DSH_HOME/settings.yaml but has no switch, because it selects between two internal renderings of the same exclusion set and there is nothing for an operator to decide:

context-compaction-optimizer:
  digestFormat: spans   # or: anchors

---

How it works

1. Annotations are stored per message (sessionId + messageId) in a DSH storage domain. A turn's mark is one write across that turn's messages.
2. When a compaction runs, the plugin appends a short digest to the summarization request, immediately before the compaction instruction.
3. Every message ahead of that point keeps its exact position, so the provider's prefix cache still hits. The digest is the only uncached input it adds — measured at roughly its own length.
4. The digest names the excluded messages by position, role and a verbatim opening, and asks the model to treat them as never written.

The unit is the turn: annotations are stored per message, but review and action are grouped as "your message plus everything the agent did about it" — a turn routinely spans dozens of messages, so marking per message would ask for a dozen clicks to express one judgement.

---

Development

npm test        # unit + contract suites; no external dependencies
npm run build   # emits lib/index.js and lib/client.js
npm run smoke   # live mount check against a running host (http://127.0.0.1:3080)
npm run measure # cache/leak report from existing session logs

npm test runs without a build and without a host. npm run smoke requires a running DSH and is the post-install verification step.

---

Compatibility

• DSH 0.1.5-rc.*, Node.js 20+.
• Depends on the harness's llm/stream waterfall and the agent preset roster.
• Does not replace or subclass compaction-basic; it is backend-independent and coexists with the stock compaction stack.

---

License

Apache-2.0 — see LICENSE.