Watch1. Context Window Limit: Constrains the total number of tokens the model can process simultaneously within a single session. When full, the model prompts for compaction or automatically compresses history. 2. Account Usage Limit: Restricts total request volume or token consumption over a rolling time window (e.g. 5-hour resets or weekly quotas). When reached, Claude displays "You have exceeded your current usage limit" with a reset timestamp.
Developers often confuse a full context window with an account rate limit, or assume session handoff tools artificially expand Claude's context window. Watch does not bypass usage quotas or replace Claude's native compaction. Understanding the difference ensures you choose the correct recovery path.
Step 1: Check terminal error signals to identify the limit type
If Claude reports "exceeded your limit" with a reset time, it is an account Usage Limit: running /compact will fail because the model quota is exhausted; wait for reset or hand off to Codex / OpenCode. If Claude reports conversation length limits or high latency, it is a Context Window Limit: run /compact.
Step 2: Apply native resolution for context length (/compact & /clear)
Inside Claude Code, run /compact to compress conversation history into a distilled summary. If historical investigative turns are no longer required, run /clear to begin a clean slate in the current workspace.
Step 3: Save session state upon hitting account usage quotas
Verify Claude Code has flushed its session transcript to ~/.claude/projects/<enc-cwd>/<session-id>.jsonl. Use Watch to inspect the working directory and target readiness for Codex or OpenCode.
Step 4: Hand off to an alternative agent without repeating context
Use Watch to convert the recorded reasoning and test results into the destination agent's format, then resume in the new CLI with full preceding context.
# Scenario A: Native resolution for context window limits (inside Claude Code)
/compact # Automatically compress history to free up context capacity
/clear # Clear conversation while keeping working directory context
# Scenario B: Multi-agent handoff upon hitting account usage limits (in Shell)
npm run watch -- open <claude-session-id> --to codex --json
npm run watch -- open <claude-session-id> --to opencode --json1. Watch does not expand single-agent context: Resuming in a new agent is subject to that agent's own context window limits. 2. Tool representation changes: Claude tool_use events degrade to structured text representations in Codex to prevent schema parsing errors. 3. Do not kill processes abruptly: Ensure session files are written before terminating terminal windows.