Compaction

Compaction reduces a stream's event history to respect runtime constraints — event count or token budget. It is the constraint-respecting counterpart to Aggregation.

Compaction removes. Aggregation creates. They are separate concerns.

When to use it#

Long-running conversations accumulate events faster than the model's context window can absorb. Use compaction to cap the size of history that flows into the next LLM call.

CompactStrategy protocol#

Every strategy implements the same shape:

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from typing import Protocol
from autogen.beta import Context
from autogen.beta.events import BaseEvent
from autogen.beta.knowledge import KnowledgeStore

class CompactStrategy(Protocol):
    async def compact(
        self,
        events: list[BaseEvent],
        context: Context,
        store: KnowledgeStore | None,
    ) -> list[BaseEvent]:
        ...

Returns a new event list that replaces the current history. Strategies must preserve the causal ordering of retained events — no reshuffling.

CompactTrigger#

A dataclass describing when compaction should fire. Any configured threshold that is exceeded triggers compaction.

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from autogen.beta.compact import CompactTrigger

trigger = CompactTrigger(
    max_events=200,           # fire when history exceeds 200 events
    max_tokens=32_000,        # fire when estimated tokens exceed 32k
    chars_per_token=4,        # estimation constant (default 4)
)

Leaving a field at 0 disables that threshold. CompactTrigger() alone does nothing — you must opt into at least one condition.

CompactTrigger is a plain data object — it records when you want compaction to fire, but does not fire it. Strategies are invoked explicitly via await strategy.compact(...).

Built-in strategies#

Both built-ins are importable from autogen.beta.compact.

TailWindowCompact#

Keeps the last N events, drops the rest. Zero LLM cost. Suitable when old context has diminishing value and recency is what matters.

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from autogen.beta.compact import TailWindowCompact
from autogen.beta.knowledge import MemoryKnowledgeStore

store = MemoryKnowledgeStore()
compact = TailWindowCompact(target=50)

retained = await compact.compact(events, ctx, store)
# retained is the last 50 events; older ones are dropped
# (and persisted to /log/{stream_id}.dropped-{n}.jsonl if store is passed)

Passing a KnowledgeStore is optional. If provided, dropped events are persisted to /log/ as a numbered segment — see the KnowledgeStore docs — so they can be replayed later via EventLogWriter.load(). If omitted, dropped events are discarded.

SummarizeCompact#

Summarizes the dropped portion via one LLM call, inserts a CompactionSummary event at the head of retained history. Use when you want to keep some sense of the old conversation instead of just forgetting it.

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from autogen.beta.compact import SummarizeCompact
from autogen.beta.config import OpenAIConfig
from autogen.beta.knowledge import MemoryKnowledgeStore

store = MemoryKnowledgeStore()
compact = SummarizeCompact(
    target=50,
    config=OpenAIConfig(model="gpt-5-mini"),  # cheap model recommended for summaries
)

retained = await compact.compact(events, ctx, store)
# retained[0] is a CompactionSummary event; retained[1:] are the last 50 originals

The summarization model is independent from the agent's main model — pick a smaller / cheaper one. Token usage is recorded on the strategy instance as strategy.last_usage.

CompactionSummary#

The synthetic event inserted by SummarizeCompact at the head of history.

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from autogen.beta.compact import CompactionSummary

summary = CompactionSummary(
    summary="User asked about gardening and sourdough; decisions made about ...",
    event_count=42,
)

CompactionSummary is on the allowlist of ConversationPolicy, so it passes through the assembly chain and reaches the LLM as context — without requiring special handling elsewhere.

Wiring onto an Agent#

Pass the strategy + trigger through KnowledgeConfig. The Agent wires a _CompactionMiddleware that fires the strategy automatically after each turn when the trigger threshold is crossed.

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from autogen.beta import Agent, KnowledgeConfig
from autogen.beta.compact import CompactTrigger, TailWindowCompact
from autogen.beta.config import OpenAIConfig
from autogen.beta.knowledge import MemoryKnowledgeStore

store = MemoryKnowledgeStore()
agent = Agent(
    "assistant",
    config=OpenAIConfig(model="gpt-5"),
    knowledge=KnowledgeConfig(
        store=store,
        compact=TailWindowCompact(target=100),
        compact_trigger=CompactTrigger(max_events=200),
    ),
)

Every compaction attempt emits a triple on the agent's stream:

The failure path is the one that matters: the strategy exception is also logged via the module logger, but the stream event is the durable signal — subscribe to CompactionFailed if you want failed compactions to surface in your application's UI or alerting. (Aggregation emits the symmetric AggregationStarted / AggregationCompleted / AggregationFailed triple — see Aggregation › Wiring onto an Agent.)

Driving a strategy directly#

If you're not using Agent (custom harness, tests, one-off scripts), call await strategy.compact(...) yourself:

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from autogen.beta.compact import CompactTrigger, TailWindowCompact

trigger = CompactTrigger(max_events=200)
compact = TailWindowCompact(target=100)

async def after_turn(events, ctx, store):
    should = trigger.max_events and len(events) > trigger.max_events
    if should:
        events = await compact.compact(events, ctx, store)
    return events

For the token-based threshold, estimate with sum(len(str(e)) for e in events) / trigger.chars_per_token.

Writing a custom strategy#

Any object with an async compact(events, ctx, store) method satisfies the protocol. A couple of ideas:

• Drop tool noise. Keep ModelRequest / ModelResponse, drop ToolCallEvent / ToolResultEvent older than some boundary.
• Priority retention. Score events (e.g. keep every ModelResponse but decimate ToolCallEvents).
• Segmented summarization. Run SummarizeCompact in chunks to produce multiple CompactionSummary events over time rather than one big one.

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from autogen.beta.events import BaseEvent, ToolCallEvent, ToolResultEvent
from autogen.beta.knowledge import KnowledgeStore

class DropOldToolEvents:
    """Keep conversation events; drop tool events older than the last K."""

    def __init__(self, keep_last_k: int = 20) -> None:
        self._k = keep_last_k

    async def compact(
        self,
        events: list[BaseEvent],
        context,
        store: KnowledgeStore | None,
    ) -> list[BaseEvent]:
        tool_types = (ToolCallEvent, ToolResultEvent)
        tool_indices = [i for i, e in enumerate(events) if isinstance(e, tool_types)]
        if len(tool_indices) <= self._k:
            return events
        drop_set = set(tool_indices[: -self._k])
        return [e for i, e in enumerate(events) if i not in drop_set]