chat context not send (sometimes)

[f1-outsourcing]

I assume that the whole chat is send as context, since you can 'compact' it. But looks like sometimes this is sometimes not happening.

previous message not included:

single message:

[ashish993]

This is a known behavior in Continue related to how context compaction works. The full chat history is NOT always sent — Continue uses a sliding window or truncation strategy when the context gets large, which can cause older messages to be dropped silently.

Why it happens:

• Continue has a configurable contextLength (default varies by model). When the accumulated tokens exceed the threshold, it truncates from the oldest messages.
• The "compact" button summarizes and replaces the history with a condensed version — but if you did not compact and the context grew naturally, Continue may have silently dropped earlier turns.

How to fix / verify:

1. Open your config.yaml (or config.json) and check/set contextLength explicitly:

   models:
     - name: your-model
       contextLength: 32000  # set to your model's actual context window

2. Enable showWhatIsBeingSent in dev settings (if available in your version) to inspect what actually goes to the model.
3. If you need the full history always sent, use the compact action before the context gets trimmed — this preserves intent without hitting the window limit.

Workaround: Manually trigger compact before long sessions to keep context under control rather than letting Continue truncate silently.

[f1-outsourcing]

Continue has a configurable contextLength (default varies by model). When the accumulated tokens exceed the threshold, it truncates from the oldest messages.

1. Ok so I never configured a contextLength, so I was never using a contextLength?
2. But the first message has the probably the most important instruction, on which the model is still working. Better would be to cut a specific part.

Enable showWhatIsBeingSent in dev settings (if available in your version) to inspect what actually goes to the model.
FYI search on showWhatIsBeingSent at https://docs.continue.dev/ shows nothing

[omni-front]

I ran into a similar issue when I was working with Continue. Sometimes, the full chat history didn't get sent because Continue was using a windowing strategy to manage context size. In my situation, I found that increasing the model's maximum context length helped.

Here's what I did: In the ~/.continue/config.yaml, I adjusted the maxContextSize setting under the model configuration to allow for a larger context. For instance:

models:
name: your-model-name
    provider: your-provider
    model: your-model
    roles: [chat]
    apiBase: http://localhost:your-port
    maxContextSize: 4096

After making this change, I restarted my environment, and it seemed to help with maintaining more of the chat history in the context. Just make sure that your model and provider can handle the increased context size. If you're using OpenAI, they typically support configurations like this, but it's always a good idea to check the compatibility with your specific model and provider.