preCompact hook prevents compacting when context limit is reached in claude code

[marcuswikstrom-dev]

What happened?
context limit was reached and was not able to compact

What did you expect?
that the hook would run and then the context would be compacted
How to reproduce:

1. Fully use mempalace in a claude code session
2. Do complex tasks until context is full
3. Try to compact

Got this error:

  ⎿  Context limit reached · /compact or /clear to continue · /model opus[1m]

✻ Crunched for 2m 53s

❯ /compact                                                                                                          
  ⎿  Error: Compaction blocked by PreCompact hook: [bash ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/hooks/mempal-precompact-hook.sh]:
     COMPACTION IMMINENT (MemPalace). Save ALL session content before context is lost:
     1. mempalace_diary_write — thorough AAAK-compressed session summary
     2. mempalace_add_drawer — ALL verbatim quotes, decisions, code, context
     3. mempalace_kg_add — entity relationships (optional)
     Be thorough — after compaction, detailed context will be lost. Do NOT write to Claude Code's native auto-memory
      (.md files). Save everything to MemPalace, then allow compaction to proceed.

Seems like it should be possible to work around the always block part here.

Environment:

• OS: Ubuntu 24.04
• Python version: 3.1.14

[Naoray]

This was fixed in #863 (merged to main) but the fix is not in the 3.3.0 pip release yet — hooks_cli.py:hook_precompact still returns {"decision":"block"} in 3.3.0.

Reproduced today on fresh pip install --upgrade mempalace (3.1.0 → 3.3.0):

echo '{"session_id":"x"}' | python -m mempalace hook run --hook precompact --harness claude-code
# returns {"decision":"block","reason":"COMPACTION IMMINENT (MemPalace)..."}

Would be great to get a 3.3.1 / 3.4.0 cut with #863 + ideally #804 (configurable interval + independent precompact toggle) landed together.