Long chats and summarized messages

Purpose

Neda has spent the whole morning in one chat, going through last quarter's orders with the agent, when a thin line appears in the middle of a reply: "Earlier messages summarized". Nothing is lost. This article explains what that line and its two companions mean, so a long chat can keep going without surprises.

Before you start

Nothing needs to be set up. For a custom agent, the notices appear only while "Summarize old history" is on in its Memory settings (see Configure agent memory).

Steps

1. Keep chatting as usual. A model can read only a limited amount of text at once, called its context window. When your chat has filled about three quarters of the chosen model's window, Agentum summarizes the oldest messages before the agent writes its next reply. Recent messages are kept word for word, within a budget of about one quarter of the model's context window.
2. While this happens, the reply shows "Summarizing earlier messages to keep this chat going…".
3. When it is done, a thin line says "Earlier messages summarized". Select its "More information" button to read: "To keep this chat going, the assistant now remembers earlier messages as a summary. You can still scroll up to read everything."
4. If the summary could not be made, the line says "Some earlier messages were left out of the assistant's memory". Its information text explains that the oldest messages were set aside to keep the chat going, and that you can still scroll up to read everything.
5. The line stays in the chat at the place where it happened, so you can see which messages came before it.

Expected result

The chat on your screen is never shortened: scroll up and every message is still there. Only what the agent keeps in mind changes. After a summary it remembers the earlier part as a short text in the language of the chat, with the names, numbers, dates, decisions, open tasks and file names that matter, and it carries on from there.

Troubleshooting