Summarization

As conversations grow longer, sending the entire history becomes impractical. Iris automatically condenses older messages into narrative summaries that preserve context, emotional dynamics, and unresolved threads.

How It Works

Summarization triggers when unsummarized messages exceed a threshold (default: 40). Recent messages (the "buffer") are kept in full detail, while older messages are summarized.

What Gets Captured

Each summary includes:

• Narrative summary - 150-300 word narrative of the conversation segment
• Narrative thread - Bridging sentence connecting to previous summary
• Emotional markers - Key emotional moments with intensity scores
• Relationship dynamics - How trust and rapport are evolving
• Evolving themes - Recurring topics across conversation
• Thread tracking - Unresolved and resolved discussion threads
• Key facts - Important information learned about the user

Summaries form a chain, with each referencing its predecessor for continuity. Up to 3 recent summaries are included in chat context.

Configuration

Setting	Default	Description
summarization.threshold	40	Unsummarized messages to trigger
summarization.buffer	35	Recent messages to keep in full
summarization.keep_recent	50	Messages to keep active

WARNING

Very aggressive summarization (low threshold) may lose nuance. The defaults balance context preservation with efficiency.