Starting a fresh chat
What it is
A chat is one conversation with your AI app. Each reply it sends is made from the chat so far, so earlier messages steer what later replies say.
Keep a chat while the job is the same and the answers are good, because it holds the work. A chat goes off track when the job changes, when your AI app warns it is long, or the answers repeat a corrected mistake, ignore an instruction or contradict something you settled. A school newsletter asked for in that chat after an hour on a grant application can come back stiff.
A fresh chat starts without the old conversation. It still gets your app's instructions (lines you set in its settings for every chat) and notes your AI app saved about you. Bring a short note of what the new job needs. Your AI app can draft it for you to check.
Tips
- When the job changes, start a fresh chat, because earlier messages keep steering each reply, including messages about the old job.
- When your AI app repeats a mistake you corrected, start a fresh chat with the task, the correction and the facts, because the mistake is still in the old chat.
- Keep asking for changes in the same chat while the job is the same and the answers are good, because starting over means explaining everything again.
Try it
- Pick one real job you have this week, such as a message to write or a plan to draft.
- Open your longest recent chat, which holds a different job, and ask your AI app to do the job from step 1. Give the facts of the job, who it is for and what you want.
- Open a fresh chat and send the job you picked in step 1 in one message, giving the same facts, who it is for and what you want.
- Read both replies and keep the one you prefer.
- Finish the job from the reply you kept by sending it or saving it.
If you have no earlier chat on a different job, use any chat you have for step 2.
- The two replies can differ in tone, audience or details taken from the earlier job.
- Replies to the same message can also differ from one try to the next.
- If the two replies are alike, or the job is really a follow-up to that chat, keep the chat you were in and ask for the change there.
- If the earlier job still turns up in the fresh chat, some AI apps with a setting turned on bring in details from past chats, never the whole conversation.
Risks
- A fresh chat does not hold what you settled in the old one, such as a figure, name or rule. Put the settled details in your first message, or have your AI app draft a short note, then read and fix it before sending.
- If you start a fresh chat after every reply, you throw away work that was going well and explain it all again. While the job is the same and the answers are good, ask for the change in the same chat.
- Your AI app can give an off-track answer in the same sure tone as a good one. An instruction you have had to give again, or an answer that contradicts something you settled, is a sign it may be time for a fresh chat.
- A short note carries whatever the old chat held, including other people's private details you shared there. Take across only what the new job needs, and check the note for anything you would not paste into any AI app.
Why it matters
You stop fighting a chat that has gone off track and stop explaining a working chat again. For each job, you decide whether to keep the chat or start a fresh one.