REA tools filling Claude Code's context

Unofficial guide. This site is an independent community guide and is not affiliated with the REA project. For authoritative docs see the official REA website and the morluto/rea GitHub repository. Commands here are taken from the official README/docs (checked 2026-10-13); REA changes quickly, so verify against the official docs.

Symptom

Claude Code pointed at a third-party Anthropic-compatible endpoint (e.g. DeepSeek) reports autocompact thrashing after adding REA.

Cause

Claude Code turns tool search off when ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL is not first-party, so every REA tool definition is sent with every request (#2019). The docs measured ~496 KB with the default profile vs ~290 KB with compact (172 tools).

Fixes

1. Add "REA_MCP_INPUT_SCHEMA_PROFILE": "compact" to the env of mcpServers.rea in ~/.claude.json, then restart Claude Code.
2. Make Claude Code assume the model's real window: set CLAUDE_CODE_MAX_CONTEXT_TOKENS (DeepSeek's guide uses a [1m] model suffix).
3. If the endpoint supports tool_reference blocks, ENABLE_TOOL_SEARCH=true restores deferred loading.

Related guides

• MCP setup for Claude Code & Cursor
• REA with Windsurf, Gemini CLI, VS Code & more
• Troubleshooting & FAQ

Sources: client-configuration.md#claude-code · issue #2019