The /clear nudge isn't a solution though. Compacting or clearing just means rebuilding context until Claude is actually productive again. The cost comes either way. I get that 1M context windows cost more than the flat per-token price reflects, because attention scales with context length, but the answer to that is honest pricing or not offering it. Not annoying UX nudges. What’s actually indefensible is that Claude is already pushing users to shrink context via, I presume, system prompt. At maybe 25% fill:

  “This seems like a good opportunity to wrap it up and continue in a fresh context window.”
  “Want to continue in a fresh context window? We got a lot of work done and this next step seems to deserve a fresh start!”

If there’s a cost problem, fix the pricing or the architecture. But please stop the model and UI from badgering users into smaller context windows at every opportunity. That is not a solution, it’s service degradation dressed as a tooltip.