As you see here context is always free

92%

no matter how many times I run

/compact

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1544763701394014271/1544763702861889626/Screenshot_2026-09-02_at_11.08.42_PM.png?ex=6a99b0cf&is=6a985f4f&hm=80e784c36ca8f8b1e474d5a31da8ff4939fe4552fed84941f7044279b9fc7081&

Thanks for reporting @proud-printer-9482 please check this

That 92% is actually the expected floor, not a fixed value. The number comes straight from Claude Code itself (the same thing its

/context

command shows), and it counts everything in the window, not just your messages.

/compact

only shrinks the conversation history. It can't touch the fixed stuff that ships with every request: the system prompt, built-in tool schemas, skills, MCP tool definitions, and your CLAUDE.md / memory files. Add the compaction summary on top, and you get a baseline of roughly 8% of the 200K window. Running

/compact

again just swaps one summary for another of similar size, so it ends up with the same reading every time. Your screenshot lines up with that: messages went 121K → 11.6K, and what's left is that 11.6K plus the fixed baseline.

ok thanks for the clarification