fix(compaction): force/truncated bypass the minMessages guard

[jonnyparris]

What

Move the force / contextWasTruncated short-circuit above the minMessages guard in shouldCompact().

Why

Autocompaction is wired in three places (loop-entry, mid-loop, pre-step) but it was unreachable on the first turn when the model ballooned input tokens — exactly the scenario where compaction matters most.

Reproduced this morning by running 3 prompts on fresh sessions. Each had:

• messageCount: 2 (user + assistant)
• totalTokenInput: 199,963 / 199,662 / 213,691
• compactionCount: 0
• Final assistant turn: 'context budget exhausted, please retry in a new session'

Trace through the code:

1. onChatMessage runs one streamText iteration
2. The model makes many tool calls in that single turn (clone + explore + read…)
3. Each tool result inflates the message array fed back to streamText, but is not persisted as a separate role:assistant row — messageCount stays at 2
4. runWatchdogCheck / wrap-up / pre-step compaction all call maybeCompactContext({ force: true })
5. maybeCompactContext calls shouldCompact({ messageCount: 2, force: true, … })
6. shouldCompact returns false because messageCount < 6, ignoring force
7. No compaction happens, the wrap-up injection fires, session ends prematurely

The minMessages guard was added to avoid pointlessly compacting brand-new sessions (compacting one message is a no-op). But force and contextWasTruncated are emergency signals — the caller has already decided compaction is warranted. They should bypass the guard.

How

Reordered the two checks. force / contextWasTruncated now short-circuit immediately, requiring only realMessageCount >= 2 (you need something to compact). Non-emergency compaction still respects the minMessages threshold.

// Before
if (messageCount < minMessages) return false;  // force never reached
if (force || contextWasTruncated) return true;

// After
if (force || contextWasTruncated) return realMessageCount >= 2;
if (messageCount < minMessages) return false;

Tests

• New: force=true bypasses the minMessages guard (2 messages is enough)
• New: contextWasTruncated=true bypasses the minMessages guard
• New: force=true with only 1 real message still returns false (nothing to compact)
• All 21 existing compaction tests still pass (compaction-policy-unit, compaction-pipeline, compaction-e2e)

Linked context

• PR feat(ui): surface skills and tool catalog in sidebar #71 — UI surfacing of skills/tools (same investigation)
• PR fix(explore): attach recovery hint to failure summaries #72 — explore failure fallback hint (same investigation)
• memory/learnings/dodo-orchestrator-model-matters.md

beep-boop-🤖