latch-compact

Run a compaction pass for the current Claude Code session against the per-project knowledge base under <KB_HOME>.

The compaction runs in a separate claude -p subprocess that takes its own context — it does NOT consume tokens from this session. We launch it in the background so the main session stays interactive while compaction runs.

This combines/overwrites the prior session_summary node with the latest state (see src/latch/pipeline/compactor.py).

Steps:

1. The wrapper targets the invoking session automatically: it reads $CLAUDE_CODE_SESSION_ID (set by Claude Code on the Bash subprocess) and selects that session's transcript explicitly — a concurrent session's newer transcript is never picked. An explicit session id can be passed as the first positional arg to compact a different session.

2. Launch the compactor with the Bash tool in the background so the main session is not blocked while compaction runs (a full compact can take 30–90s):

   Bash(
     command="bash <KB_HOME>/bin/run_compact_now.sh",
     run_in_background=true,
     description="Run KB compaction in background"
   )
   

   Return control to the user immediately with the background shell id. Do not poll — the harness will notify you when the subprocess exits. Omit --final — manual /latch-compact is a rolling compact, not a session end. The session_summary node stays in staging status.

3. While the compactor is running, the project lock at <KB_HOME>/projects/<sanitized-cwd>/compactor.lock is held. Any latch_insert / latch_update / latch_link / latch_unlink calls made by the main session will block for up to 60s waiting for the compactor to finish, then return {"ok": false, "reason": "compaction_in_progress", "retry_after_s": 10} if it still hasn't finished. This is the deterministic write-side serialization — the busy payload's message tells you what to do: retry the write once, and if it is still locked, ask the user whether to retry again or investigate. Don't chase the lock.

4. When the harness notifies that the background shell completed, fetch its stdout and report which summary_node_id was updated and a one-line gist.

If anything fails, check <KB_HOME>/compactor.log.