> uhh openai just did a whole thing with arc agi where they very clearly explained that you will lose a lot of performance if you do, this isnt just about convenience

Which part are you referring to here? web_search coming from the provider hiding the tokens is just a convenience, there is no reason it can't be done with revealing information. Their compaction on the server might be amazing, but at least in principle it can be replicated on the client side as well and it could have been implemented in a way that reveals the new initial context.