Claude Desktop is Anthropic's desktop app. The only way Compresh plugs in here is the Model Context Protocol — and MCP is agent-invoked: Claude itself decides whether to call the compress tool. This is not transparent, every-turn compression.
Claude Desktop uses Anthropic's first-party transport: there is no swappable base URL (so no proxy) and no per-turn hook surface. That leaves MCP as the only path — and with MCP the model chooses when to call compress. It may call it late, partially, or not at all, so savings here are opportunistic, not guaranteed. If you want deterministic compression on every turn, use a proxy host (Claude Code) or a hook host (OpenClaw) instead.
Hook SOON
Not applicable. Claude Desktop has no public hook surface comparable to Claude Code's UserPromptSubmit.
MCP (compresh-mcp) SOON
Install compresh-mcp via pipx and register it in claude_desktop_config.json. Once enabled, Claude may call the compress tool — when it judges the conversation long enough — with the recent conversation, send the result back as a system message, and continue from there with a fraction of the original token cost. Whether and when it fires is the model's call, not ours.
Status: under verification. Step-by-step install guide will land once we've reproduced the end-to-end flow.
Proxy SOON
Not applicable. Claude Desktop uses Anthropic's first-party transport and does not expose a swappable base URL.
Related
- Claude Code — terminal counterpart with a hook surface
- /v1/tul2 reference