Yep I have an autonomous task where it has been running for 8 hours now and counting. It compacts context all the time. I’m pretty skeptical of the quality in long sessions like this so I have to run a follow on session to critically examine everything that was done. Long context will be great for this.
Are those long unsupervised sessions useful? In the sense, do they produce useful code or do you throw most of it away?
I get very useful code from long sessions. It’s all about having a framework of clear documentation, a clear multi-step plan including validation against docs and critical code reviews, acceptance criteria, and closed-loop debugging (it can launch/restsart the app, control it, and monitor logs)
I am heavily involved in developing those, and then routinely let opus run overnight and have either flawless or nearly flawless product in the morning.