I do find it really interesting that more coding agents don't have this as an toggleable feature, sometimes you really need this level of control to get useful capability

Yep; I've actually had entire jobs essentially fail due to a bad compaction. It lost key context, and it completely altered the trajectory.

I'm now more careful, using tracking files to try to keep it aligned, but more control over compaction regardless would be highly welcomed. You don't ALWAYS need that level of control, but when you do, you do.