OmniRoute/docs/COMPRESSION_GUIDE.md

🗜️ Prompt Compression Guide — OmniRoute

Save 15-75% on token costs automatically. For a quick overview, see the README Compression section.

Overview

OmniRoute implements a modular prompt compression pipeline that runs proactively before requests hit upstream providers. This means your token savings happen transparently — no changes needed to your workflow.

Client Request
  → Compression Strategy Selector
    → Combo override? → Use combo setting
    → Auto-trigger threshold? → Use auto mode
    → Default mode? → Use global setting
    → Off? → Skip compression
  → Selected Compression Mode
    → Off: No compression
    → Lite: Safe whitespace/formatting cleanup (~15%)
    → Standard: Caveman-speak filler removal (~30%)
    → Aggressive: History aging + summarization (~50%)
    → Ultra: Heuristic pruning + code-block thinning (~75%)
    → RTK: Command-aware terminal/tool-output filtering (20-70%)
    → Stacked: Ordered multi-engine pipeline, usually RTK then Caveman (30-80%)
  → Compressed Request → Provider

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Compression Modes

Off

No compression applied. All messages pass through unchanged.

Lite Mode (~15% savings, <1ms latency)

The safest mode — zero semantic change, only formatting cleanup:

Technique	Description
collapseWhitespace	Merge consecutive blank lines and trailing spaces
dedupSystemPrompt	Remove duplicate system messages
compressToolResults	Compress verbose tool/function outputs
removeRedundantContent	Strip repeated instructions
replaceImageUrls	Shorten base64 image data URIs

Best for: Always-on usage, safety-critical workflows.

Standard Mode (~30% savings)

Inspired by Caveman — removes filler words and verbose phrasing while preserving meaning:

• Removes filler words ("please", "I think", "basically", "actually")
• Condenses verbose phrases ("in order to" → "to", "as a result of" → "because")
• Strips polite hedging ("Would you mind...", "If you could possibly...")
• 30+ regex rules tuned for coding prompts

Best for: Daily coding workflows, cost-conscious teams.

Aggressive Mode (~50% savings)

Smart history management for long sessions:

• Message Aging — older messages get progressively compressed
• Tool Result Summarization — long tool outputs replaced with summaries
• Structural Integrity Guards — ensures tool_use + tool_result pairs stay consistent
• Context Window Awareness — respects per-model token limits

Best for: Extended debugging sessions, large codebases.

Ultra Mode (~75% savings)

Maximum compression for token-critical scenarios:

• Heuristic Pruning — removes messages below relevance threshold
• Code Block Thinning — compresses repetitive code examples
• Binary Search Truncation — finds optimal cut point for context window
• All Aggressive mode features included

Best for: When you're hitting context limits repeatedly.

RTK Mode (20-70% savings)

RTK mode is optimized for verbose tool outputs that appear in coding-agent sessions:

• Detects command/output classes such as git status, git diff, git log, test runners, TypeScript/Vite/Webpack builds, ESLint/Biome/Prettier, npm audit/installs, Docker logs, infra output, and generic shell output
• Applies JSON filter packs from open-sse/services/compression/engines/rtk/filters/
• Ships 39 built-in filters with inline verify samples
• Removes ANSI control sequences, progress bars, repeated lines, and non-actionable noise
• Preserves failures, errors, warnings, changed files, summaries, and the tail of long output
• Supports trust-gated project filters, global filters, and optional redacted raw-output recovery

Best for: Agent sessions with shell, build, test, git, grep, and file-output transcripts.

Stacked Mode (30-80% savings)

Stacked mode runs multiple compression engines in a deterministic order. The default pipeline is:

RTK -> Caveman

That order keeps terminal/tool output compact first, then applies Caveman semantic condensation to the remaining natural-language prompt. Stacked pipelines can be configured globally or through compression combos assigned to routing combos.

Best for: Mixed context with large tool logs plus human instructions or assistant summaries.

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Token Savings Visualization

Without compression: 47K tokens sent to LLM
With Lite:           40K tokens sent          (15% saved — safe, always-on)
With Standard:       33K tokens sent          (30% saved — caveman-speak rules)
With Aggressive:     24K tokens sent          (50% saved — aging + summarization)
With Ultra:          12K tokens sent          (75% saved — heuristic pruning)
With RTK:            varies by output         (20-70% saved — command-aware filters)
With Stacked:        varies by pipeline       (30-80% saved — multi-engine execution)

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Configuration

Dashboard

Navigate to Dashboard → Context & Cache:

• Caveman — mode selection, language packs, preview, and global defaults
• RTK — command-filter preview, RTK safety settings, and filter catalog
• Compression Combos — named engine pipelines assigned to routing combos
• Auto-Trigger Threshold — automatically engage compression when token count exceeds threshold

Per-Combo Override

In Dashboard → Context & Cache → Compression Combos, assign a compression combo to a routing combo:

Combo: "free-forever"
  Compression Combo: "coding-agent-stack"
  Pipeline: RTK -> Caveman
  Targets:
    1. gc/gemini-3-flash
    2. if/kimi-k2-thinking

This lets you use stacked compression on free/coding providers while keeping lite mode on paid subscriptions.

API

# Get compression settings
curl http://localhost:20128/api/settings/compression

# Update compression settings
curl -X PUT http://localhost:20128/api/settings/compression \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"defaultMode":"stacked","autoTriggerMode":"stacked","autoTriggerTokens":32000}'

# Preview a specific RTK/stacked payload
curl -X POST http://localhost:20128/api/compression/preview \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"mode":"rtk","messages":[{"role":"tool","content":"npm test output here"}]}'

# List RTK filter packs
curl http://localhost:20128/api/context/rtk/filters

# Test RTK directly with optional command metadata
curl -X POST http://localhost:20128/api/context/rtk/test \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"command":"npm test","text":"FAIL tests/example.test.ts\nError: boom"}'

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What Gets Protected

The compression engine always preserves:

• ✅ Code blocks (fenced and inline)
• ✅ URLs and file paths
• ✅ JSON structures and structured data
• ✅ Identifiers and protected technical tokens
• ✅ Mathematical expressions
• ✅ Tool/function call definitions
• ✅ System prompts (in lite mode)

RTK raw-output recovery redacts common API keys, bearer tokens, Slack tokens, AWS access keys, passwords, tokens, and secrets before anything is persisted.

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Compression Stats

Every compressed request includes stats in the server logs:

{
  "originalTokens": 47200,
  "compressedTokens": 40120,
  "savingsPercent": 15.0,
  "techniquesUsed": ["collapseWhitespace", "dedupSystemPrompt"],
  "mode": "lite",
  "engine": "caveman",
  "compressionComboId": "coding-agent-stack",
  "durationMs": 0.8,
  "rtkRawOutputPointers": []
}

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Phase Roadmap

Phase	Modes	Status
Phase 1	Off, Lite	✅ Shipped
Phase 2	Standard, Aggressive, Ultra	✅ Shipped
Phase 3	RTK, Stacked, Compression Combos	✅ Shipped
Phase 4	Per-model adaptive, ML-based pruning	🗓️ Planned

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Acknowledgments

Standard mode compression rules are inspired by Caveman by JuliusBrussee (⭐ 51K+) — the viral "why use many token when few token do trick" project.

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See Also

• Environment Config — Compression environment variables
• Architecture Guide — Compression pipeline internals
• User Guide — Getting started with compression
• RTK Compression — RTK filters, trust model, verify gate, raw-output recovery
• Compression Engines — Caveman, RTK, stacked, APIs, MCP, dashboard
• Compression Rules Format — JSON rule-pack format
• Compression Language Packs — Language-specific Caveman rules