2-Prompt System to Carry Context Between Claude Chats Without Token Waste

A Reddit user posted a practical system to solve the problem of hitting Claude's chat length limit mid-project. The solution uses two prompts: one for context extraction from the old chat, another for initialization in the new chat.

The Problem

Long Claude conversations slow down, hit length limits, or get expensive on API. Common workarounds—manual summarization, copy-pasting entire chats, or starting fresh—lose critical decisions, waste tokens, or require re-explaining.

The System

Prompt 1: Context Extraction (paste in old chat)
Instructs Claude to compress the entire conversation into a structured 9-section summary: Objective, Key Context, Decisions Made, Work Completed, Current State, Next Steps, Open Questions/Blockers, Critical Data/Assets, and Style & Preferences. The output must be placed inside one clean code block. Target length: 300–600 words, preserving specifics over generalities.

Prompt 2: Chat Initialization (paste in new chat)
You paste the extracted context block and instruct the new chat to treat it as source of truth. It asks Claude to verify understanding, flag any gaps, and resume from Next Steps rather than restarting.

The exact prompts are provided in the source. For example, the extraction prompt's output structure uses these headers:

1. Objective
2. Key Context
3. Decisions Made (with reasons)
4. Work Completed
5. Current State
6. Next Steps (mark immediate next with →)
7. Open Questions / Blockers
8. Critical Data / Assets
9. Style & Preferences

The initialization prompt includes: "Treat the context as established. Do not re-frame or restart. Maintain all decisions and preferences listed." and asks for a confirmation reply with the objective, immediate next action, and any gaps.

Who It's For

Developers using Claude (API or web) who need to continue long-running projects without losing context or burning tokens on redundant explanations.