What Does Context Compression Cost an Agent? Interaction Costs Unrevealed by Task-Completion Metrics

Excerpt

arXiv:2608.16370v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Task completion is the standard metric for evaluating context compression, yet it is incomplete: compression can increase an agent's interaction cost by forcing it to reacquire dropped state while leaving completion statistically unchanged. We introduce a controlled runtime measurement protocol for reacquisition cost in a bounded-horizon tool-using agent. The agent acts in a deterministic planning environment under a fixed 24-turn horizon. We vary