claude-compress 0.1.4

Context compression for Claude Code — reduces tokens via PreToolUse hooks

claude-compress

Fewer tokens, lower cost, longer context — automatically.

claude-compress sits between Claude Code and every Bash command it runs. Before the output reaches Claude, it is compressed: ANSI codes stripped, repeated lines collapsed, JSON minified, noisy build output folded, and duplicate content replaced with a short reference token. The result is the same information in fewer tokens.

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How it works

Claude Code                  claude-compress              Your shell
    │                              │                          │
    │  PreToolUse hook fires       │                          │
    │ ─────────────────────────>   │                          │
    │                              │  rewrites command        │
    │  git status                  │  ──────────────────────> │
    │  becomes:                    │                          │ runs
    │  git status 2>&1 |           │                          │ git status
    │  claude-compress compress    │   <────────────────────  │
    │                              │  compresses output       │
    │   <─────────────────────────  │                         │
    │  sees compressed output      │                          │

1. claude-compress init installs a PreToolUse hook in Claude Code's settings
2. The hook fires before every Bash tool call and rewrites the command to pipe its output through claude-compress compress
3. Compression runs locally — no network calls, zero telemetry
4. Claude sees the compressed output; a dedup cache means repeated reads return a 13-character reference instead of the full content

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Installation

Requires Python 3.9+

git clone https://github.com/prabhay759/claude-compress
cd claude-compress
pip install -e .

Verify:

claude-compress --help

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Quick start

Project-level (this repo only)

claude-compress init

Writes hooks to .claude/settings.local.json in the current directory.

Global (every project on this machine)

claude-compress init --global

Writes hooks to ~/.claude/settings.json. Compression runs in all Claude Code sessions without any per-project setup.

That's it. Open Claude Code and every Bash command is now compressed automatically.

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Token savings — real examples

Repeated log lines · 90% reduction

# Raw output (21 lines)
WARNING: deprecated API call
WARNING: deprecated API call
... × 18 more identical lines ...
Build completed: 1 error

# Compressed (3 lines)
WARNING: deprecated API call (×20)
Build completed: 1 error

Cargo build noise · 88% reduction

# Raw (21 lines — 16 Compiling + error)
   Compiling serde v1.0.0 ...
   Compiling serde v1.0.1 ...
   ... 14 more Compiling lines ...
   Compiling myapp v0.1.0 ...
error[E0308]: mismatched types
  --> src/main.rs:42:5
42 |     do_thing(42u32);
   |              ^^^^^ expected &str, found u32

# Compressed (5 lines — error preserved in full)
   Compiling ... (16 crates)
error[E0308]: mismatched types
  --> src/main.rs:42:5
42 |     do_thing(42u32);
   |              ^^^^^ expected &str, found u32

JSON API response · 69% reduction

// Raw (318 bytes)
{
  "status": "ok",
  "user": { "id": 42, "name": "prabhay", "avatar": null,
            "bio": null, "location": null,
            "preferences": { "theme": "dark", "notifications": null,
                             "language": "en", "timezone": null } },
  "metadata": null, "errors": null, "warnings": null
}

// Compressed (95 bytes — nulls stripped, compact)
{"status":"ok","user":{"id":42,"name":"prabhay","preferences":{"theme":"dark","language":"en"}}}

Dedup — same file read twice · 100% reduction

# First read: compressed normally
...file contents...

# Second read: 13-character reference
§ref:e31ccbf816f6c042§

Claude Code can resolve a §ref:…§ token back to the original content — so information is not lost, just deduplicated.

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Viewing your savings

claude-compress stats

Last 24h compression stats:
  Compressions : 42
  Tokens in    : 18,340
  Tokens out   : 7,210
  Tokens saved : 11,130
  Reduction    : 60.7%

Pass --hours to change the look-back window:

claude-compress stats --hours 1    # last hour
claude-compress stats --hours 168  # last week

During active use you also see per-command feedback in the Claude Code status area:

[claude-compress] 41/354 tokens (88% reduction) [cargo]
[claude-compress] 6/2413 tokens (100% reduction) [cat]   ← dedup hit

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What gets compressed

Content type	Technique	Typical reduction
Repeated / identical lines	Run-length encoding (RLE)	80–99%
Cargo / Go build output	Compiling-line folding	70–90%
pytest / jest output	Failure-only extraction	60–85%
JSON API responses	Null stripping + minification	40–70%
git diff context	Unchanged-hunk folding	20–50%
ANSI color codes	Regex strip	5–20%
Repeated file reads	SHA-256 dedup cache	100%
Large outputs (> 500 lines)	Head + tail truncation	variable

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What is NOT compressed

Compression is skipped (returns {} passthrough) for:

• Interactive commands — vim, ssh, python, psql, less, watch, …
• Shell pipelines — commands containing &&, ||, |, ;, >, <, &
• Command substitution — $(…) or backticks
• Heredocs — << EOF
• Background jobs — trailing &
• Self-invocation — claude-compress … itself

This means complex one-liners and interactive sessions are always passed through unchanged.

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Commands

Command	Description
claude-compress init	Install hooks in .claude/settings.local.json (project)
claude-compress init --global	Install hooks in ~/.claude/settings.json (all projects)
claude-compress hook	Process PreToolUse JSON from stdin (called by Claude Code)
claude-compress hook --precompact	Mark dedup cache stale before compaction
claude-compress compress --cmd NAME	Compress stdin and print to stdout (called via pipe)
claude-compress resume	Re-activate dedup cache after SessionStart/compact
claude-compress stats [--hours N]	Show token savings (default: last 24 h)
claude-compress uninstall	Remove hooks from project settings
claude-compress uninstall --global	Remove hooks from global settings

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Uninstalling

Remove from a single project:

claude-compress uninstall

Remove globally:

claude-compress uninstall --global

Both commands surgically remove only the claude-compress entries and leave all other hooks in your settings untouched.

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Environment variables

Variable	Effect
CLAUDE_COMPRESS_DIR	Override the cache directory (default: ~/.claude-compress/)

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Running tests

pip install pytest
python -m pytest tests/ -v

67 tests covering hook passthrough cases, compression pipeline, and installer merge/uninstall logic.

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Privacy

All processing is local. No data leaves your machine. The dedup cache (~/.claude-compress/cache.db) is a local SQLite database. There is no telemetry, no network calls, and no external dependencies.