3 ms·

Yeah I start a new session to mitigate this. Don’t keep hammering away - close the current chat/session whatever and restate the problem carefully in a new one.

by davedx 1y ago

cjbgkagh 1y ago
There should be a simple button that allows you refine the context. A fresh LLM could generate a new context from the input and outputs of the chat history, then another fresh LLM can start over with that context.
- adastra22 1y ago
  /compact in Claude Code.
- pulvinar 1y ago
  It's easy to miss: ChatGPT now has a "branch to new chat" option to branch off from any reply.
- PantaloonFlames 1y ago
  You are saying “fresh LLM” but really I think you’re referring to a curated context. The existing coding agents have mechanisms to do this. Saving context to a file. Editing the file. Clearing all context except for the file. It’s sort of clunky now but it will get better and slicker.
  - cjbgkagh 1y ago
    It seems that I have missed this existing feature, I’m only a light user of LLMs, I’ll keep an eye out for it.
    - fzzzy 1y ago
      some sibling comments mentioned Claude code has this
sethhochberg 1y ago
I've had great luck with asking the current session to "summarize our goals, conversation, and other relevant details like git commits to this point in a compact but technically precise way that lets a new LLM pick up where we're leaving off". The new session throws away whatever behind-the-scenes context was causing problems, but the prepared prompt gets the new session up and running more quickly especially if picking up in the middle of a piece of work that's already in progress.
- DenisM 1y ago
  Wow, I had useless results asking “please summarize important points of the discussion” from ChatGPT. It just doesn’t understand what’s important, and instead of highlighting pivoting moments of the conversation it produce a high level introduction for a non-practitioner. Can you share you prompt?
  - sethhochberg 1y ago
    Honestly, I just type out something by hand that is roughly like what I quoted above - I'm not big on keeping prompt libraries. I think the important part is to give it (in my case, these days "it" is gpt-5-codex) a target persona, just like giving it a specific problem instead of asking it to be clever or creative. I've never asked it for a summary of a long conversation without the context of why I want the summary and who the intended audience is, but I have to imagine that helps it frame its output.

Yeah I start a new session to mitigate this. Don’t keep hammering away - close the current chat/session whatever and restate the problem carefully in a new one.

by davedx 1y ago

Yeah I start a new session to mitigate this. Don’t keep hammering away - close the current chat/session whatever and restate the problem carefully in a new one.

cjbgkagh 1y ago

There should be a simple button that allows you refine the context. A fresh LLM could generate a new context from the input and outputs of the chat history, then another fresh LLM can start over with that context.

adastra22 1y ago
/compact in Claude Code.
pulvinar 1y ago
It's easy to miss: ChatGPT now has a "branch to new chat" option to branch off from any reply.
PantaloonFlames 1y ago
You are saying “fresh LLM” but really I think you’re referring to a curated context. The existing coding agents have mechanisms to do this. Saving context to a file. Editing the file. Clearing all context except for the file. It’s sort of clunky now but it will get better and slicker.
- cjbgkagh 1y ago
  It seems that I have missed this existing feature, I’m only a light user of LLMs, I’ll keep an eye out for it.
  - fzzzy 1y ago
    some sibling comments mentioned Claude code has this

sethhochberg 1y ago

I've had great luck with asking the current session to "summarize our goals, conversation, and other relevant details like git commits to this point in a compact but technically precise way that lets a new LLM pick up where we're leaving off". The new session throws away whatever behind-the-scenes context was causing problems, but the prepared prompt gets the new session up and running more quickly especially if picking up in the middle of a piece of work that's already in progress.

DenisM 1y ago
Wow, I had useless results asking “please summarize important points of the discussion” from ChatGPT. It just doesn’t understand what’s important, and instead of highlighting pivoting moments of the conversation it produce a high level introduction for a non-practitioner. Can you share you prompt?
- sethhochberg 1y ago
  Honestly, I just type out something by hand that is roughly like what I quoted above - I'm not big on keeping prompt libraries. I think the important part is to give it (in my case, these days "it" is gpt-5-codex) a target persona, just like giving it a specific problem instead of asking it to be clever or creative. I've never asked it for a summary of a long conversation without the context of why I want the summary and who the intended audience is, but I have to imagine that helps it frame its output.