Smart Context Management

When working with Large Language Models (LLMs), there are limits to how much conversation history they can process at once. Goose provides smart context management features to help you maintain productive sessions even when reaching these limits. Here are the key concepts:

• Context Length: The amount of conversation history the LLM can consider
• Context Limit: The maximum number of tokens the model can process
• Context Management: How Goose handles conversations approaching these limits

Smart Context Management Features

When a conversation reaches the context limit, Goose offers different ways to handle it:

Feature	Description	Best For	Impact
Summarization	Condenses conversation while preserving key points	Long, complex conversations	Maintains most context
Truncation	Removes oldest messages to make room	Simple, linear conversations	Loses old context
Clear	Starts fresh while keeping session active	New direction in conversation	Loses all context

Using Smart Context Management

Goose Desktop

Goose Desktop exclusively uses summarization to manage context, preserving key information while reducing size.

Automatic

When you reach the context limit in Goose Desktop:

1. Goose will automatically start summarizing the conversation to make room.
2. You'll see a message that says "Preparing summary...", followed by "Session summarized."
3. Once complete, you'll have the option to "View or edit summary."
4. You can then continue the session with the summarized context in place.

Manual

You can proactively summarize your conversation before reaching context limits:

1. Click the scroll text icon () in the chat interface
2. Confirm the summarization in the modal
3. View or edit the generated summary if needed

Goose CLI

The CLI offers three context management options: summarize, truncate, or clear your session.

Automatic

When you hit the context limit, you'll see this prompt to choose a management option, allowing you to continue your session:

◇  The model's context length is maxed out. You will need to reduce the # msgs. Do you want to?
│  ○ Clear Session   
│  ○ Truncate Message
│  ● Summarize Session

final_summary: [A summary of your conversation will appear here]

Context maxed out
--------------------------------------------------
Goose summarized messages for you.

Manual

To proactively trigger summarization before reaching context limits, use the /summarize command:

( O)> /summarize
◇  Are you sure you want to summarize this conversation? This will condense the message history.
│  Yes 
│
Summarizing conversation...
Conversation has been summarized.
Key information has been preserved while reducing context length.

Token usage

Goose Desktop

After sending your first message to Goose, a colored circle appears next to the model name at the bottom of the session window. The color provides a visual indicator of your token usage for the session.

• Green: Normal usage - Plenty of context space available
• Orange: Warning state - Approaching limit (80% of capacity)
• Red: Error state - Context limit reached

Hover over this circle to display:

• the number of tokens used
• the percentage of available tokens used
• the total available tokens
• A progress bar showing your current token usage

Goose CLI

This functionality is not available in the Goose CLI.