The Active Task field in compression summaries is the single most important
field for task continuity across context boundaries. The previous template
described it narrowly as a 'task assignment' or 'request', which caused the
summary LLM to write 'None' whenever the user's most recent input was a
question, a decision request, or a discussion turn rather than an
imperative command. The assistant on the other side of the compaction then
treated the conversation as resolved and gave a generic recap instead of
answering the still-open question.
Expand the template guidance to cover:
* explicit task assignments
* questions awaiting an answer
* decisions awaiting input (A vs B)
* ongoing discussions where the assistant owes the next substantive reply
Reserve 'None' for the rare case where the last exchange was fully
resolved (e.g. user said 'thanks, that's all').
Also tighten the trailing CRITICAL instruction in the summary prompt so the
LLM cannot fall back to the old 'no imperative command → None' heuristic.
No behavioural code changes — template strings only. All 83 existing
compressor tests pass.
Mathijs van den Hurk
56b8dccf25