Stingy Context: 18:1 Hierarchical Code Compression for LLM Auto-Coding
Abstract
We introduce Stingy Context, a hierarchical tree-based compression scheme achieving 18:1 reduction in LLM context for auto-coding tasks. Using our TREEFRAG exploit decomposition, we reduce a real source code base of 239k tokens to 11k tokens while preserving task fidelity. Empirical results across 12 Frontier models show 94 to 97% success on 40 real-world issues at low cost, outperforming flat methods and mitigating lost-in-the-middle effects.
Fields of Study & Subjects
Software Engineering Research
Topic Modeling
Natural Language Processing Techniques
Publication details
- Journal / source
- arXiv (Cornell University)
- Publication date
- 11 January 2026
- Document type
- Preprint