Cline: Context compaction increases token count instead of reducing and messages also remain unchanged.
Cline Surface
VSCode Extension
Cline Version
4.0.1785329359
Beta version
- I am using a beta version of Cline
What happened?
After manually triggering Context Compaction, the displayed token count increased from 2.8K to 3.4K, while the message count remained unchanged (9 → 9). The compaction process did not appear to reduce the conversation context.
Steps to reproduce
Repro on IDEs: VSC, JB Repro on OS: macOS, Window JB Version: 1.1.65-nightly.20260728.436
- Open the Cline extension in VS Code.
- Start a new conversation.
- Select any file from @context and send any query to cline and wait for the response.
- Once task completed, manually trigger Context Compaction.
- Observe the compaction summary displayed after the operation.
Observed:
The token count increases after context compaction (e.g., 2.8K → 3.4K). The number of messages remains unchanged.
Expected:
Context Compaction should not increase the token count and should reduce messages count.
Video Link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LkpnEF3bxqmh_d7MFrj2rBf4GJWQp7rN/view?usp=sharing
Provider/Model
anthropic/claude-opus-4.8
IDE / CLI Diagnostics
No response
System Information
Version: 1.122.1 (Universal) Commit: 8761a5560cfd65fdd19ce7e2bd18dab5c0a4d84e Date: 2026-05-29T09:25:37+02:00 Electron: 39.8.8 ElectronBuildId: 13870025 Chromium: 142.0.7444.265 Node.js: 22.22.1 V8: 14.2.231.22-electron.0 OS: Darwin arm64 24.3.0
Source: cline/cline