Request for Feature Enhancement: Expose “Condense Context” as a Tool for Modes

[OleynikAleksandr]

Rationale

• Roo Coder already uses an internal “Condense Context” agent that intelligently shrinks the active chat history when triggered via the UI button.

• Specialist modes, however, have no programmatic access to this capability. When their session log or interaction grows near the token limit, they must either:

– manually ask the coordinator to press the button, or

– perform a costly session-rollover procedure that fragments history and adds coordination overhead.

Proposal

Expose the same functionality as a standard XML tool, e.g.
<condense_context>
session|chat|file
<target_path>optional/file/or/dir.md</target_path>
</condense_context>

Behavior
• When invoked with scope="chat" (default) it applies the existing algorithm to the active conversation history and returns the token reduction achieved.
• With scope="file" it runs the Context Condenser logic on a specified Markdown or plain-text file, producing an in-place condensed version or writing to a new file with a *.condensed.md suffix.
• The tool returns a JSON payload:
{
"tokens_before": 118734,
"tokens_after": 42305,
"bytes_saved": 215218,
"output_path": ".ruru/sessions/.../artifacts/..."
}

Benefits

• Autonomous modes can keep their own context under control without coordinator intervention, reducing unnecessary MDTM rollovers.

• Less fragmentation: a long-running task can stay in one logical session, preserving audit trails.

• Unified mechanism—same agent, same quality of condensation—now usable in automated workflows (e.g. pre-commit hooks, nightly maintenance).

Security & Safeguards

• Apply the existing permission system: modes must have write access to the target file/directory.

• Add a hard cap (e.g. may only be invoked once every N minutes per session) to avoid runaway loops.

• Log each invocation to the session log with before/after token counts for audit.

Deliverables

• Tool schema definition and integration in the global tool registry.

• Updated documentation and example usage.

• Optional VS Code command palette entry that simply issues the XML tool call, unifying GUI and API.

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Providing this tool will empower modes to manage their own footprint, improve efficiency, and keep conversations coherent without manual UI intervention.