Reminders

Quack shows two kinds of short notices. They appear to you, not to Claude, and each shows once per level, not on every message.

The chat got big

Once every 100k tokens of context (change it with QUACK_COMPACT_AT):

Quack: this chat carries 120k tokens and every message re-reads them. New task? /clear. Same task? /compact.

After /compact the context drops, so the reminder can come back later.

The cache expired

The prompt cache makes re-reading cheaper, but it lasts 5 minutes on the API and 1 hour on subscriptions. Quack reads which one you use from the transcript (override with QUACK_CACHE_TTL_MIN). After a longer pause, on a chat over 30k tokens:

Quack: after 75 min away the prompt cache expired, so this message re-reads 140k tokens at full price. After a long break, /clear is often cheaper.

When you resume an old chat with a cold cache, the session start shows a similar notice with the estimated cost.