Visible-Agent-Loop-Protocol

Context Compression

Long context is a reliability risk.

Context policy must be scanned before dispatch, not discovered after a task is already deep into execution.

Context Policy Fields

{
  "soft_warning_pct": 55,
  "hard_compression_pct": 65,
  "emergency_stop_pct": 80,
  "checkpoint_interval_minutes": 45,
  "checkpoint_after_phase": true,
  "checkpoint_after_fix_review_rounds": 2,
  "compression_target_pct_min": 15,
  "compression_target_pct_max": 25,
  "fallback_triggers": [
    "user_interruption_resume",
    "wrong_project_or_tool_target_confusion",
    "two_fix_review_rounds",
    "before_new_roadmap_task_after_long_task"
  ]
}

Default Thresholds

Role	Soft warning	Hard compression	Emergency stop
coordinator	50%	60%	80%
implementer	55%	65%	80%
reviewer	60%	70%	80%
prototype	60%	70%	80%
other	60%	70%	80%

Meaning

Soft warning:

Finish the current small operation and prepare compression notes.

Hard compression:

Stop new implementation, routing, review, or voting. Write a handoff before continuing.

Emergency stop:

Do not run commands, edit files, send dispatches, or issue final verdicts until compression is complete and state is revalidated.

Dispatch Gate

Context policy is not passive metadata. Before dispatch, the validator or runtime adapter must check whether the Leader-declared Agent is already at or above hard_compression_pct or explicitly marked compression_required.

If so:

do not send the dispatch
request/write context compression handoff
re-read task state and evidence
rerun routing if the task, project, or tools changed

Dispatch Payload Budget

The coordinator or leader must keep worker dispatches short. A good dispatch is not a transcript; it is a precise assignment with file refs.

The complete generated dispatch has strict role-specific ceilings:

Primary role	Max characters	Max reference tokens
coordinator	3000	750
implementer	2800	700
reviewer	2400	600
prototype or researcher	2400	600
other	2200	550

The portable reference-token estimator is ceil(chars / 4). It is a deterministic budget proxy, not a provider-tokenizer claim. Adapters with exact tokenizers enforce the lower limit. routing.json records configured and actual dispatch sizes; context-pack.json records each Leader-declared Agent’s role budget.

Dispatch should contain:

• short task brief;
• role and permission boundary;
• expected evidence paths;
• visible attention slice;
• compact context pack summary;
• short skill recommendation labels;
• refs to task.md, automation-policy.json, routing.json, context-selection.json, context-pack.json, mask-list.json, evidence-board.json, and skill-recommendations.json.

Only task.md, context-pack.json, and skill-recommendations.json need to be in the starting worker prompt. Other task-local refs can be named as on-demand progressive disclosure. Coordinator, implementer, reviewer, prototype, and researcher prompts should receive only their role-specific evidence and attention slice.

Dispatch should not paste:

• the full conversation;
• full task history when task.md is available;
• long repeated skill-router task text;
• stale memory without evidence.
• raw private transcript or broad operator preference data that is not selected into context-pack.json.

HTML can render dashboards or reports, but the canonical worker dispatch should remain readable plain text or Markdown unless the runtime exports the same concise assignment and receipt evidence.

Measure the checked-in legacy baseline against the current generator with:

python3 scripts/benchmark-dispatch-size.py

The benchmark reports only Unicode character counts and percentage reduction.

Required Handoff

## Context Compression

Active project:
Active task:
My role:
Current phase:
Completed:
Not completed:
Evidence paths:
Known blockers:
Next safe action:
Do not use / stale context:

Fallback Triggers

If exact context percentage is not available, force compression after:

• user interruption followed by resume;
• two visible implementation/review/fix loops;
• wrong project, tool target, tab, path, or phase confusion;
• starting a new roadmap task after a long task;
• inability to state project root, task id, phase, and next safe action without rereading files.

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