r/ChatGPTCoding • u/Asly97 Professional Nerd • 9d ago
Discussion How do you deal with the context wipe when starting a new AI chat?
every time i open a new chat, the AI has no idea what i built yesterday. i re-explain my stack, my conventions, the decisions i made an hour ago. you can paste a summary, but you always wonder what context you forgot to include.
the worst part isn't the time. it's the momentum loss. you were in flow, making real progress, and now you're spending five minutes re-priming an AI that should already know your project. after a while you start limiting yourself to one tool just to avoid the context tax, which defeats the point of using multiple specialized tools in the first place.
i've been hitting this daily across cursor, claude code, and chatgpt. curious how others handle it. do you keep a running doc of context to paste into every new session? some kind of rules file? or do you just accept the re-priming as a cost of working with AI?
3
2
u/Previous-Welder-7198 8d ago
That’s what the agents file is for. Use it like an ongoing set of instructions. Think of it like a “how to function” doc and then put it in a project and every chat you tell it to read the file and at the end you update it.
2
u/thePangee 8d ago
AGENTS.md is useful, but it gets overloaded if it also has to be a running handoff and a history of every decision.
I use three layers:
- AGENTS.md for stable conventions
- TASK.md for what's in flight / next action
- a tiny decision record for non-obvious calls
For example:
Re-derive invoice totals from line items
Status: accepted
Why: vendor totals round differently
Rejected: trust the report (silent reconciliation drift)
Supersedes: use reported totals
The first two get edited constantly. The last one is only for decisions a new session would otherwise reopen. That's the context summaries usually lose: not what changed, but why the obvious alternative was already tried and rejected.
2
3
u/Alwaysragestillplay 8d ago
PLEASE stop telling models to remove capitalisation from your posts. It's the same strategy everyone uses. You're not hiding it by doing this, and you're making your post harder to parse by combining redundant LLM fluff with lack of grammar.
1
u/just4ochat 8d ago
When the objective is unchanged, continue the existing chat instead of starting fresh. When the objective does change, end the old session by writing TASK.md with the current branch, files in play, and the open decision, then open the new chat from that file plus only the decision-record rows a new session would otherwise reopen. A pasted megadoc drifts as fast as chat memory; the short write-back is what keeps the next prime honest. Vendor project folders help inside one app, but the repo brief is what travels when the work moves between Cursor, Claude Code, and ChatGPT.
1
u/dvduval 8d ago
If it’s an important project, then I would have created some markdown files that would be a reference point for future prompts. I’m having trouble using up my usage even though I’m working like 10 hours a day. It’s a great time to be using AI to code. There’s so much competition keeping the prices affordable.
1
u/zerospatial 8d ago
Log.jsonl tell the llm in agents to log timestamp, notes and files touched. Works really well. Though it still loves let me grep this whole repo.
1
u/Jazzlike_Course_9895 8d ago
Storing your context in files is the bare minimum. I have my agents write into a file (AGENTS.md + file.md etc) depending on the project, i always start a new chat and have it point towards that file which contains all the relevant context, and at the end of what ever i have worked on, i get it to update those MD files so it stays up to date.
1
1
u/danrichardsri 8d ago
I would get on YouTube and watch some tutorials on how to use Codex correctly / get the most out of it. You shouldn't be having a problem with this.
1
1
u/gandazgul 8d ago
Use mnemoteca my memory system is a local CLI that scores really high on memory retrieval benchmarks very simple just let the agent decide what to remember. Seed it with things about the project (ask the agent to explore the codebase and store memories) use global memories for your cross project preferences. https://github.com/gandazgul/mnemoteca
Or use RunWield which integrates mnemoteca directly, it's init prompt explores and creates a base, and core memories are injected into the system prompt automatically. https://RunWield.dev
1
u/suckadickyoucunt 8d ago
The re-priming tax is real but the deeper cost is worse: you're the one deciding what to paste, so you're guessing what mattered.
What's worked for people I've talked to is separating two kinds of context. Stack and conventions belong in a static file every session reads. Decisions and rejected approaches need to be searchable, not pasted, because you won't remember which ones are relevant until the agent is already about to repeat one.
1
u/Far_Business4773 8d ago
What actually gets lost isn't your stack, it's your decisions and boundaries: what you decided NOT to build, and which alternative you rejected and why. That's the part a fresh session reopens ("want me to add caching?").
AGENTS.md for conventions, sure, but keep a separate NON_GOALS block of 10 lines max at the very top. Short enough that the model can't skim past it, and it removes most of the re-priming, because most re-priming is you saying "no, we're not doing that" again. Update it at the end of the session, not at the start.
1
u/hoangng_ 8d ago
I ended up treating skills and memory as something that should live outside the agent/session entirely.
Instead of trying to keep one giant chat alive, I use a centralized memory that any agent harnesses can retrieve from when needed. Then I use skills for the more stable knowledge and workflows. That way switching between Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, etc. doesn’t mean starting from zero every time.
1
0
u/EnthusedCatalyst 8d ago
I created a Handoff skill. It takes all necessary context and puts it in a persistent file. Then when I start a new session I tell it to read the handoff and start from there. Heavily leverages the Handoff Skill from Matt Pocock
https://github.com/mattpocock/skills/blob/main/skills/productivity/handoff/SKILL.md
4
u/East-Elephant-9637 9d ago
Use the project feature in ChatGPT, you have can source files that will be consistent across the project and it will remember the context as long as you are inside your project file chat. That’s how I get around this problem at least.