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MCP server that reduces Claude Code context consumption by 98%

mksg.lu

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Re: MCP server that reduces Claude Code context consumption by 98%

#13
post #6

Nice work. It strikes me there's more low hanging fruit to pluck re. context window management. Backtracking strikes me as another promising direction to avoid context bloat and compaction (i.e. when a model takes a few attempts to do the right thing, once it's done the right thing, prune the failed attempts out of the context).

Maybe the right answer is “why not both”, but subagents can also be used for that problem. That is, when something isn’t going as expected, fork a subagent to solve the problem and return with the answer.

It’s interesting to imagine a single model deciding to wipe its own memory though, and roll back in time to a past version of itself (only, with the answer to a vexing problem)

Re: MCP server that reduces Claude Code context consumption by 98%

#14
post #2

Author here. I shared the GitHub repo a few days ago ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47148025 ) and got great feedback. This is the writeup explaining the architecture. The core idea: every MCP tool call dumps raw data into your 200K context window. Context Mode spawns isolated subprocesses — only stdout enters context. No LLM calls, purely algorithmic: SQLite FTS5 with BM25 ranking and Porter stemming. Since…

Really intrigued and def will try, thanks for this.

In connecting the dots (and help me make sure I'm connecting them correctly), context-mode _does not address MCP context usage at all_, correct? You are instead suggesting we refactor or eliminate MCP tools, or apply concepts similar to context_mode in our MCPs where possible?

Context-mode is still very high value, even if the answer is "no," just want to make sure I understand. Also interested in your thoughts about the above.

I write a number of MCPs that work across all Claude surfaces; so the usual "CLI!" isn't as viable an answer (though with code execution it sometimes can be) ...

Edit: typo

Re: MCP server that reduces Claude Code context consumption by 98%

#15
post #13
post #6

Nice work. It strikes me there's more low hanging fruit to pluck re. context window management. Backtracking strikes me as another promising direction to avoid context bloat and compaction (i.e. when a model takes a few attempts to do the right thing, once it's done the right thing, prune the failed attempts out of the context).

Maybe the right answer is “why not both”, but subagents can also be used for that problem. That is, when something isn’t going as expected, fork a subagent to solve the problem and return with the answer. It’s interesting to imagine a single model deciding to wipe its own memory though, and roll back in time to a past version of itself (only, with the answer to a vexing problem)

I forget where now but I'm sure I read an article from one of the coding harness companies talking about how they'd done just that. Effectively it could pass a note to its past self saying "Path X doesn't work", and otherwise reset the context to any previous point.

I could see this working like some sort of undo tree, with multiple branches you can jump back and forth between.

Re: MCP server that reduces Claude Code context consumption by 98%

#17
post #6

Nice work. It strikes me there's more low hanging fruit to pluck re. context window management. Backtracking strikes me as another promising direction to avoid context bloat and compaction (i.e. when a model takes a few attempts to do the right thing, once it's done the right thing, prune the failed attempts out of the context).

Agree. I’d like more fine grained control of context and compaction. If you spend time debugging in the middle of a session, once you’ve fixed the bugs you ought to be able to remove everything related to fixing them out of context and continue as you had before you encountered them. (Right now depending on your IDE this can be quite annoying to do manually. And I’m not aware of any that allow you to snip it out if y…

Oh that's quite a nice idea - agentic context management (riffing on agentic memory management).

There's some challenges around the LLM having enough output tokens to easily specify what it wants its next input tokens to be, but "snips" should be able to be expressed concisely (i.e. the next input should include everything sent previously except the chunk that starts XXX and ends YYY). The upside is tighter context, the downside is it'll bust the prompt cache (perhaps the optimal trade-off is to batch the snips).

Re: MCP server that reduces Claude Code context consumption by 98%

#18
post #9
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two LLMs speaking with each other on HN? Amusing!

Why are you assuming they’re an LLM? And please don’t say “em dash”. Note: you’re replying to the library’s author.

The first two sentences of the first two paragraphs of OP are a dead giveaway.
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