Compaction clears screen - can't scroll up to see previous context

[TechNickAI]

Problem

When compaction happens, the screen clears and users can't scroll up to see the previous conversation context. This is disorienting - you lose visual continuity of what was just discussed.

Expected Behavior

Either:

• Preserve scroll history so users can scroll up
• Or show a summary of recent context after compaction

Impact

This is particularly frustrating when compaction happens mid-task and you need to reference something that was just shown (code snippets, decisions made, etc.).

[kali113]

this is not a bug.

[lukehutch]

@kali113 if it's by design, it's a very badly-thought-out design. Are you on the Anthropic team?

Clearing the scrollback on compaction loses very valuable information, and combined with the fact that Claude often forgets what precisely it was doing when the conversation had to be compacted, this is a major usability problem.

[kali113]

@lukehutch nooo, I don't work for Anthropic, you can Ctrl+o to see what was fed into Claude. I think that it should be a setting, you are getting a 👍🏼.

[lukehutch]

I have found that even Ctrl+o doesn't always work, for the record...

This should be a simple change though. Just don't clear the screen on compaction.

[scapeshift-ojones]

Still happening on v2.1.47. Screen clears after compaction with no way to scroll back. Ctrl+O enters "transcript mode" which only shows post-compaction messages, and Ctrl+E just toggles timing badges — neither provides access to the previous conversation.

This is now consolidated into #27242 alongside branch navigation regression and plan-mode context loss — all variations of the same core problem: data is saved to JSONL but the TUI can't display it.

If you're still affected, please 👍 and comment on #27242 to help it reach the triage threshold.