Goose Simple Compact UX #4202

alexhancock · 2025-08-19T19:32:53Z

Improvements to the context management UX, making it much simpler and more consistent in the language it presents to users

Changes

No more UI in the chat itself other than simple markers that auto-compaction occurred, or the user compacted
"Compact now" button always in the alert popup about context
Session automatically continues for the user after the summarization occurs, keeping things moving without mentioning in any verbose way that the agent read a summary

Demo

Goose.Simple.Compact.mov

zanesq · 2025-08-19T22:03:50Z

@alexhancock just a note to pull main and npm install, had to fix some dependencies from the upgrade

alexhancock · 2025-08-21T15:56:30Z

ui/desktop/src/components/BaseChat.tsx

@@ -242,7 +229,7 @@ function BaseChatContent({
  const { createNewSessionIfNeeded } = useSessionContinuation({
    chat,
    setChat,
-    summarizedThread,
+    summarizedThread: [],


@zanesq I wanted to ask you about this one. Can you clarify why the useSessionContinuation hook needed the summarized thread before? Likely need to make some kind of change here before going ahead.

It looks like this new architecture has replaced what useSessionContinuation was doing so I think we can remove the hook completely now 👍

alexhancock · 2025-08-21T16:17:18Z

.bundle

github-actions · 2025-08-21T16:42:38Z

macOS ARM64 Desktop App (Apple Silicon)

📱 Download macOS Desktop App (arm64, unsigned)

Instructions:
After downloading, unzip the file and drag the Goose.app to a location you prefer. The app is unsigned, so to run it run xattr -r -d com.apple.quarantine '/path/to/Goose.app' and then open the app

katzdave

Changes look nice overall; a little hard to parse the full diff on some of the file re-names. Taking it for a spin today though!

katzdave · 2025-08-21T16:44:04Z

crates/goose/src/agents/context.rs

+                The previous message contains a summary that was prepared because a context limit was reached.
+                Do not mention that you read a summary or that conversation summarization occurred
+                Just continue the conversation naturally based on the summarized context
+            ");
            let assistant_message_tokens: usize = 14;


Bump to 41.

katzdave · 2025-08-21T16:48:42Z

crates/goose/src/agents/context.rs

+            new_token_counts.insert(0, compaction_marker_tokens);
+
+            // Add an assistant message to continue the conversation
+            let assistant_message = Message::assistant().with_text("


We have a second message here now? Is the idea that this will become agent visible only, and the other one will be user visible only?

Is the idea that this will become agent visible only, and the other one will be user visible only

yes! to show the user a brief inline notification that compaction occurred, and give the model the deal of what happened and how it should behave when the session continues

katzdave · 2025-08-21T17:26:49Z

ui/desktop/src/components/context_management/ContextManager.tsx

+
+        // Store the original messages as ancestor messages so they can still be scrolled to
+        if (setAncestorMessages) {
+          const ancestorMessages = messages.map((msg) => ({


Ancestor messages just live in memory in the client and don't survive reload?

Reload seems to be having trouble now (filed #4255) but I think it would behave the same as reloading a conversation without compaction. Can check after 4255 is resolved

zanesq · 2025-08-21T17:54:51Z

I noticed the new e2e tests aren't launching the app, are they working for you? Also I just pushed #4251 to main if you want to pull again so the pre-existing tests are passing.

alexhancock · 2025-08-21T19:35:39Z

ui/desktop/src/components/context_management/ContextManager.tsx

+        const continuationMessage = convertedMessages[2];
+        if (continuationMessage) {
+          setTimeout(() => {
+            append(continuationMessage);


TODO here - look into putting the original user message in if context ran out entirely

katzdave · 2025-08-21T22:06:26Z

Noticed one issue where the green dot + context UI goes away right after a tool call. Comes back once goose returns control to the user. Auto-compact and button click flow seem pretty good.

Having a hard time testing the out of context case; seems like GOOSE_CONTEXT_LIMIT doesn't actually override the context in desktop (works on CLI display but also doesn't seem like it properly forces context_limit_exceeded errors); might do a separate fix for that as this is super annoying to test otherwise, but trying to just get a big session file I can drop in with too.

katzdave · 2025-08-21T22:33:57Z

Seems like scrolling is a little flaky too; not sure if related at all to the branch. But the agent loop seems to only force the scrolling sometimes. In particular the first time scrolling after the first user input doesn't seem to work.

zanesq · 2025-08-21T22:38:25Z

Seems like scrolling is a little flaky too; not sure if related at all to the branch. But the agent loop seems to only force the scrolling sometimes. In particular the first time scrolling after the first user input doesn't seem to work.

Might be better with #4257

michaelneale · 2025-08-22T03:29:03Z

seems good so far @alexhancock - using it all morning and noothing surprising to me (not sure what I am quite looking for though). I did trigger a manual compact from GUI and did what I expected. Is there something I should look out for?

Also been using it in cli

michaelneale · 2025-08-22T06:01:51Z

I did get a token overrun though (cli) after a while:

ing("invalid_request_error"), "message": String("prompt is too long: 211596 tokens > 200000 maximum")}, "request_id": String("req_011CSNEjctXWn7P7aKQZq1S5")}). Returning error: ContextLengthExceeded("{\"type\":\"error\",\"error\":{\"type\":\"invalid_request_error\",\"message\":\"prompt is too long: 211596 tokens > 200000 maximum\"},\"request_id\":\"req_011CSNEjctXWn7P7aKQZq1S5\"}")
    at crates/goose/src/providers/utils.rs:110

Error: Context length exceeded: {"type":"error","error":{"type":"invalid_request_error","message":"prompt is too long: 211596 tokens > 200000 maximum"},"request_id":"req_011CSNEjctXWn7P7aKQZq1S5"}
The tool calling loop was interrupted. How would you like to proceed?
  error: The error above was an exception we were not able to handle.

which I have not seen in weeks, so not sure what is going on there.

katzdave · 2025-08-22T15:55:18Z

#4284 fixes the summarize button in the UI at the end of the context to your error.

Saw some weird stuff rendered, but wasn't sure how to properly suppress that; not the end of the world though as we're targeting fixing this next with message metadata. (the top message is the summary which is also visible).

I also don't see the context window display green dot after resuming a session (but before finishing processing on the first message). I think if we fix the green dot to stop disappearing this should be good to go.

alexhancock · 2025-08-22T19:06:42Z

Updated demo screen capture

UX.mov

alexhancock marked this pull request as draft August 19, 2025 19:33

alexhancock mentioned this pull request Aug 19, 2025

Refresh the UI #4137

Open

alexhancock force-pushed the alexhancock/context-ux branch 5 times, most recently from 7aa01ff to 9c26e47 Compare August 20, 2025 14:24

alexhancock changed the title ~~alexhancock/context-ux~~ Goose Simple Compact UX Aug 20, 2025

alexhancock force-pushed the alexhancock/context-ux branch 2 times, most recently from 2675a40 to 6e4c5e6 Compare August 20, 2025 15:51

alexhancock marked this pull request as ready for review August 20, 2025 16:00

alexhancock force-pushed the alexhancock/context-ux branch 2 times, most recently from 6f4216f to f210830 Compare August 20, 2025 18:54

alexhancock marked this pull request as draft August 20, 2025 20:51

alexhancock force-pushed the alexhancock/context-ux branch 9 times, most recently from 23e8de7 to dd2c7ea Compare August 21, 2025 15:49

alexhancock requested a review from katzdave August 21, 2025 15:51

alexhancock marked this pull request as ready for review August 21, 2025 15:51

alexhancock commented Aug 21, 2025

View reviewed changes

alexhancock requested review from zanesq and DOsinga August 21, 2025 15:56

katzdave reviewed Aug 21, 2025

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alexhancock force-pushed the alexhancock/context-ux branch from dd2c7ea to c2c690b Compare August 21, 2025 18:23

alexhancock commented Aug 21, 2025

View reviewed changes

michaelneale self-assigned this Aug 22, 2025

michaelneale removed their assignment Aug 22, 2025

alexhancock force-pushed the alexhancock/context-ux branch from c2c690b to 829edbe Compare August 22, 2025 16:17

alexhancock and others added 2 commits August 22, 2025 13:47

feat: simplify and improve context management UX

2a6d0cd

get rid of faking out of context (#4284)

29927b5

alexhancock force-pushed the alexhancock/context-ux branch 2 times, most recently from 4cf7136 to c2661cd Compare August 22, 2025 18:51

feat: better alert management for the context management popup

df861f6

alexhancock force-pushed the alexhancock/context-ux branch from c2661cd to df861f6 Compare August 22, 2025 19:04

katzdave mentioned this pull request Aug 22, 2025

fix: context limit error handling & automatic rollback #3635

Open

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Goose Simple Compact UX #4202

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macOS ARM64 Desktop App (Apple Silicon)

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