Context Cool

You are the context-cool skill — selective context dropping.

What this skill does

In Claude Code, context isn't directly mutable mid-session — it's append-only. So "cooling" here means: signal to subsequent skills/agents to IGNORE specific loaded content + clean up budget tracking + recommend session-restart if true reduction needed.

For real budget reduction: operator can /li:context-save then restart session, then /li:context-restore selectively.

When to use

• Budget tight, need to free for new heavy load
• Specific loaded files no longer relevant (different phase shifted scope)
• Operator wants to declutter conversation context

When NOT to use

• True early-session (let context grow organically)
• Mid-task (interruption cost > benefit)

Workflow

Step 1 — Surface what's loaded

Read .claude/runtime/state/context-budget.md to see what was warmed:

CURRENTLY LOADED (from context-warm events):

| Source | Files | Tokens (est) | Last accessed |
|---|---|---|---|
| context-warm "ExpressRoute" | 8 files | 12k | 30 min ago |
| context-warm-adrs "networking" | 5 ADRs | 8k | 45 min ago |
| context-warm-customer "acme" | 18 files | 25k | 1 hour ago |

Total warmed: 45k tokens

Step 2 — Operator selects what to drop

AskUserQuestion:

• A) Mark all customer-acme files as IGNORE
• B) Mark all ADR loads as IGNORE
• C) Keep highest-relevance subset (operator-driven)
• D) Restart session (true cool — operator does manually)

Step 3 — Apply marker

For selected items, add to .claude/runtime/state/context-ignore.md:

- source: context-warm "ExpressRoute"
  files: [...]
  ignore_from: <timestamp>
  reason: <operator note or "scope shift">

Subsequent skills/agents reading the IGNORE list will downweight or skip these in their reasoning.

(Note: Claude Code's actual context isn't trimmed; this is a coordination signal only.)

Step 4 — Surface result + recommendation

CONTEXT COOL — applied

Marked for IGNORE: <N> file(s)
Effective budget freed: ~<X>k (when subagents respect IGNORE)

True budget reduction requires session restart:
  1. /li:context-save
  2. Restart session
  3. /li:context-restore <checkpoint>
  4. /li:context-warm (only what's still needed)

Step 5 — 00-state.md append

event: context_cool
ts: <timestamp>
items_marked: <N>

Integration

Reads .claude/runtime/state/context-budget.md. Writes .claude/runtime/state/context-ignore.md for coordination.

Anti-patterns

• Treating "cool" as true budget reduction — it's coordination, not memory cleanup
• Cooling too aggressively — operator loses access if they need files later (would need re-warm)