Which tool to choose
The summary technique works everywhere, with any assistant: it doesn't depend on special features. Those who use project spaces (on ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini) have an extra advantage: they can save the summary as a project context file, so every new chat for the same work sees it without having to re-paste it. But even without that, copying the summary into a note and re-pasting it is enough.
How it's done
- When you close a phase of work, or you feel the chat slowing down, ask for the summary. The operational wording:
Summarize this conversation in a block that I can paste into a new chat to pick up again without losing anything important. Include: goal, decisions made, constraints to respect, current status, and next steps. Be concise but complete, and don't leave out specific details like numbers and technical choices.
- Copy the summary and save it somewhere of your own: a note, a file, the project space.
- Open a new chat and paste the summary as the first message.
- Continue the work from there, with a clear slate but the context safe.
A concrete example
Marco was designing a small website with the AI's help, work spread across a week. Instead of keeping a single endless chat that got confused after two days, at the end of each session he asked for the summary with goal, choices made, and what was left. He pasted it the next day into a fresh chat. Every morning he started over with a lucid AI perfectly up to date, without the slowdowns and repetitions of an overloaded conversation. The summary had become the connecting thread of the project.
When it does NOT work (and how to fix it)
If the summary loses details you needed
Sometimes it condenses too much and cuts something important. The fix is to ask for it in a targeted way: "include the exact numbers, the technical choices, and the specific names," or reread the summary and add by hand what's missing before saving it.
If the chat has already become too confused
If you wait until the conversation is collapsing, even the summary can come out imprecise, because the AI is already struggling to hold the thread. The fix is to anticipate: do the summary while things are still clear, at the end of each phase, not when you're already in chaos.
If you need continuity across many chats for the same work
For a big project with many conversations, re-pasting the summary every time becomes awkward. There a project space is the way to go, where the context lives once and all the chats share it.
A tip from someone who actually uses it
Keep a living "context document": a file of your own that you update with the summary at the end of each session. It becomes the project memory that you control, readable, editable, and independent of any tool. If you change assistant or if the automatic memory acts up, that document remains, and in thirty seconds you bring any AI up to speed on everything.
Frequently asked questions
How often should I make the summary?
At the end of each phase of work, or as soon as you feel the answers slowing down and repeating. Better one too many than one too few: a summary costs one message, a collapsed chat costs you rebuilding everything.
Isn't it better to copy the whole conversation instead of the summary?
No: the whole conversation is full of attempts, dead ends, and noise that, re-pasted, confuse the AI again. The summary is the clean version, made on purpose for starting over. You carry the result, not the mess behind it.
Doesn't the tool already save the context on its own with memory?
Automatic memory gathers some pointers, but in an opaque and not always complete way. The summary is different: it's a precise snapshot of the work that you decide and control. The two coexist, but for a serious project the hand-made summary is more reliable.
Can't I just keep one very long chat, so I don't have to save the context?
No, and it's the shortcut that makes things worse. The longer a chat gets, the more the AI struggles to give weight to the important details, repeats itself, and loses the thread. An endless conversation doesn't preserve the context better: it drowns it. Summarizing and starting over clean yields far more than a mega-chat that drags on, because you keep only what counts and leave the noise behind.