1M Context & Session Management

Your context window is finite — manage it deliberately.

What Fills Your 1M Context

System + CLAUDE.md

Conversation

Tools + file reads + output

Remaining

01,000,000 tokens

Context rot: as context fills, attention spreads — older, irrelevant content dilutes focus. More tokens ≠ better performance.

Every Turn Is a Branching Point

Continue — keep going in the same session

/rewind — jump back, drop the failed attempt

/clear — start fresh, you write what carries forward

Compact — Claude summarizes the session (lossy)

Subagent — delegate to a fresh context, get summary back

Top habit: rewind instead of correcting. “That didn’t work, try X” pollutes context. Rewind drops the failed attempt entirely.