Feature request- Ability to remove messages from the chat history

[qpd-v]

This will help save on token costs if we can somehow delete messages we don't need from the chats. Especially images!

[smallstepman]

Also that would be a great way to help roocline unstuck if it ever executes a command, and the output is too long (currently causing hang, which requires to restart vscode from time to time). With the ability to modify history, the operator will have an option to influence the command roocline is about to execute, e.g. the logs will be very long, try to tail them or grep them to find what you're looking for

[jeanesh]

How about computing a summary of the context accumulated upto that point. (key parts of the code, files analysed, current objectives, last x responses) and then pass this into a new task? At least then it might be able to continue in a more graceful way.

Another simpler model could be used to perform the summary.

Other ideas...applying RAG on the accumulated context from the previous task.

[mrubens]

Does the message deletion feature added a few days ago help?

[smallstepman]

you didn't! 🤩
it's awesome.

[smallstepman]

What would be even more amazing is to keep a tree of edits (of chat, and file modifications). This would allow rolling back the state of conversation and the repo, to allow exploring alternative routes

I'm currently abusing git stash to do it, kinda, far from perfect tho, because even tho I will roll back the state of files, roocline will sometimes get stuck on previous ideas; now with ability to delete this problem can be somehow mitigated, however without the ability to undo-the-delete, it will also loose context of the edits if I reinstate previous state of files from stash

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emacs has something called undo-tree, which keeps the history of all edits to the files - this is independent of git

openwebui allows to not only delete but also modify both your prompts and gpt responses, building out the tree of conversation

it would be straight sci-fi to have it in roocline

I think using git to build this feature would be ideal, then at the same time quite tricky, unless someone can come up with some magic how to use git worktrees, or git branches configured somehow not to be pushed to origin

wdyt?

refs:
microsoft/vscode#20889
https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=UndoTree.undo-tree

[qpd-v]

No because it still keeps them in history. For example if i get a notification that token limit has been exceeded, even if I delete messages it doesn't change anything. Sending another message still gets the notification that the token limit has been exceeded. So I don't think it's very effective.

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On Fri, Jan 3, 2025, 5:47 PM Matt Rubens ***@***.***> wrote: Does the message deletion feature added a few days ago help? — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#171 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/A5VWTNKPI5BKDC7HVR7T7232I4OQNAVCNFSM6AAAAABT3MNHVOVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43URDJONRXK43TNFXW4Q3PNVWWK3TUHMYTCNZTGAYTINY> . You are receiving this because you authored the thread.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[mrubens]

Can you try again with a new task? I had to add a timestamp on the api calls so it doesn’t work as well with tasks started on previous versions of the app.

[dustmoo]

As a developer that finds that models tend to work better with clear specific context I would like to set a context limit in-which Roo summarizes and starts a fresh message/task in the UX.

Maybe Roo can just ask at a certain interval? Maxing out tokens is not the way with Claude in my experience and gets super expensive whereas new tasks generally can reference the context they need from the file-system rather than maintaining a giant context window. Bedrock's Claude limit is so large that cline/VS. Code/Chromium have a hard time managing the full request.