I keep a few long running chats for important things and then just keep the random questions as individual chats. There's not a lot of structure but it works.
For example at the moment I have 1 long chat about some health stuff, 1 long chat about some bicycle repairs I'm doing, and then the rest are one offs. I rename the long ones (or just remember the name) and they stay at the top because I find them when I need.
I also manage memories assertively. If there's something important that I'm tired of repeating I just ask it to add it to memory and it will do it.
Most of my professional work is done in cursor so it's in a different place to my personal questions. These usually are one chat per feature kind of thing, and start a new one when it gets confused with the enormous context
I have gotten myself into habit of making my default ChatGPT session a temporary chat. This also means I can control what ChatGPT learns about, and so random stuff doesn't cloud up its memory of me the user. Only when I want to discuss something at length or keep a record of it do I start a normal chat.
I think this is a method. However, you haven't really solved the problem I mentioned, after all, in your method, the conversation history will only increase.
Suppose you have a hundred conversations that can be retained, how would you manage them?
Find patterns and merge similar-intent inquiries into a single thread.
I used to ask an LLM for executive summaries by pasting an article URL into a fresh conversation each time. Now, I don't open a new thread or even write a follow-up comment on the same thread. Instead, I simply edit the prompt (of a single thread) with the new link.
I just clean up old chats every week.
I keep maybe 3–5 that matter.
If I need the info again, I’ll just ask ChatGPT — faster than digging through history.
I said I clean up chats weekly, but honestly, I also delete small or casual ones right after they’re done.
So the “weekly cleanup” takes maybe a minute total.
I think whether to keep chats depends on your goal. I use AI mainly as a tool for work or quick problem-solving, so I don’t need to preserve long conversations.
But if someone uses AI more like a friendly companion, I totally get why they’d want to keep the history.
When I get a really good answer, I save that text elsewhere and still delete the chat.
That’s why my ChatGPT sidebar rarely has more than about 20 chats.
I keep a few long running chats for important things and then just keep the random questions as individual chats. There's not a lot of structure but it works.
For example at the moment I have 1 long chat about some health stuff, 1 long chat about some bicycle repairs I'm doing, and then the rest are one offs. I rename the long ones (or just remember the name) and they stay at the top because I find them when I need.
I also manage memories assertively. If there's something important that I'm tired of repeating I just ask it to add it to memory and it will do it.
Most of my professional work is done in cursor so it's in a different place to my personal questions. These usually are one chat per feature kind of thing, and start a new one when it gets confused with the enormous context
I have gotten myself into habit of making my default ChatGPT session a temporary chat. This also means I can control what ChatGPT learns about, and so random stuff doesn't cloud up its memory of me the user. Only when I want to discuss something at length or keep a record of it do I start a normal chat.
I think this is a method. However, you haven't really solved the problem I mentioned, after all, in your method, the conversation history will only increase.
Suppose you have a hundred conversations that can be retained, how would you manage them?
You can manage the memories in settings. I have to go through every now and then and purge weird stuff that it's latched onto
Find patterns and merge similar-intent inquiries into a single thread.
I used to ask an LLM for executive summaries by pasting an article URL into a fresh conversation each time. Now, I don't open a new thread or even write a follow-up comment on the same thread. Instead, I simply edit the prompt (of a single thread) with the new link.
I just clean up old chats every week. I keep maybe 3–5 that matter. If I need the info again, I’ll just ask ChatGPT — faster than digging through history.
My method is similar to yours, although I don't clear chat history. Because I think if I have that time, it's better to ask directly.
How much time does it take for you to clear chat history every week?
I said I clean up chats weekly, but honestly, I also delete small or casual ones right after they’re done. So the “weekly cleanup” takes maybe a minute total.
I think whether to keep chats depends on your goal. I use AI mainly as a tool for work or quick problem-solving, so I don’t need to preserve long conversations. But if someone uses AI more like a friendly companion, I totally get why they’d want to keep the history.
When I get a really good answer, I save that text elsewhere and still delete the chat. That’s why my ChatGPT sidebar rarely has more than about 20 chats.
I think you have a very valuable ability, which is always being able to distinguish what excellent answers are.
Sometimes I miss it, and when I go back to look, I almost can't find it back.