# Context & compaction

The ring meter next to the crew chip shows how full the conversation's context window is. Click it for an honest breakdown, and compact the session to reclaim room without losing the thread.

## The context meter

The ring fills as the conversation grows and shows the percentage used. It stays neutral, turns amber as you approach the limit, and red when it’s nearly full. Click it to open the breakdown.

## What the breakdown shows

The popover separates what actually sits in the window from the gross totals, so the number reads honestly:

- Window fill — a stacked bar of cached (re-sent context, billed at a fraction) vs fresh input, against the free space left.
- This turn — input split into cached vs fresh, and output split into reasoning vs answer, shown only when the provider reports those fields.
- Session total — the same breakdown summed across every turn, with the turn count.

> Cached isn't the costCached input is context re-sent each turn and billed at a fraction of fresh input — so the gross token total isn’t your bill. The meter breaks it out so you can read it correctly.

## Compacting a session

As the window fills, Foxora compacts older turns out of the live context to keep it bounded — the breakdown notes how many turns are compacted (they’re still recallable, just no longer in the live window). You can also compact on demand: the Compact session button in the popover summarizes older turns out of the window in place. Start a fresh session is the secondary escape hatch when you’d rather begin clean.

> Estimated vs exactWhen the gateway reports real usage, the numbers are exact. If a provider gives none, the meter falls back to an estimate from message size and labels it as approximate.