How to Use 4 Claude Context Optimization Tools

In long conversation sessions, accumulating unnecessary context can degrade model performance. To prevent this, Anthropic provides more sophisticated context management tools beyond /clear (delete everything) and /compact (summarize everything).

1. /btw (By The Way) Used to handle simple questions that don't need to remain in the conversation history. The answer appears as a disappearing overlay and is not included in the conversation history, preventing context consumption.

2. /rewind (Selective Summarization) Manages context by summarizing the conversation based on a specific point in time.

• Summarize from here: Summarizes the content after that point. Useful when you want to keep important early context, such as initial architecture decisions, while compressing only the subsequent complex debugging process.
• Summarize up to here: Summarizes the content before that point. Used to remove the noise of initial setup while preserving the latest state of current work.

3. /compact <instructions> (Directed Summarization) While the basic /compact command relies on the model's judgment, this command lets the user directly specify the key content to summarize. For example, you can enter /compact Focus on the API to generate a summary focused on specific information.