Context Reduction

Context reduction trims oversized tool output before it pollutes later turns. Large tool responses can dominate the context window without adding proportional value.

Why Reduction Matters

Agent tools produce varied output. Some tools return concise, useful data. Others return massive JSON blobs, stack traces, or log dumps where only a fraction is relevant.

Without reduction:

• Every byte of tool output stays in the conversation forever
• Future turns pay the token cost of irrelevant past output
• The model wastes attention on noise

With reduction:

• Tool output is trimmed to keep the signal
• The context window stays lean
• The model focuses on what matters

Reduction Pipeline

TokenPilot's reduction runs a pipeline of passes on each tool result:

Pass	What It Does	Configurable
toolPayloadTrim	Truncates oversized JSON/text payloads to a reasonable length	Yes
(additional passes)	Future passes will be added based on tool type patterns	—

Reduction Modes

lightmem2 reduction mode light     # Conservative trimming
lightmem2 reduction mode balanced  # Default — balanced signal vs. noise

Mode	Behavior	Risk
light	Only removes clearly redundant data	Very low
balanced	Removes noise while keeping likely-useful data	Low

Controlling Reduction

# Toggle reduction
lightmem2 reduction on
lightmem2 reduction off

# Switch mode
lightmem2 reduction mode balanced

# Enable/disable specific passes
lightmem2 reduction pass toolPayloadTrim off
lightmem2 reduction pass toolPayloadTrim on

# Check current status
lightmem2 reduction status

When to Disable Reduction

Consider disabling reduction if:

• You're debugging and need to see exact tool output
• A tool's output format is misidentified as noise
• You're investigating unexpected model behavior

lightmem2 reduction off
# ... debug ...
lightmem2 reduction on

View Reduction Effects

The visual inspector shows what was trimmed:

lightmem2 visual

Switch to the reduction view to see per-turn trimming statistics.

Next

• Context Eviction — pruning old context
• Stable Prefix — cache optimization
• Reports and Visuals — see all metrics