The assistant reads the last ten exchanges of the conversation you are in, and nothing before that. An exchange is one message from you plus its reply. So a detail you gave it twenty messages ago is still on your screen, but it is no longer being sent with your question, and the assistant answers as though you never said it. Nothing is broken and nothing was deleted.
The transcript you see is longer than the one it reads
Everything you have said in a chat stays visible when you scroll up. That is your record, not the assistant's working memory. Each time you send a message, the ten most recent exchanges from that chat are collected and sent along with it, and the eleventh drops off the back. Older turns are not summarised or compressed, they are simply not part of what the reply is built from.
Some things are sent every time, whatever the window holds
A few things never depend on the history, so you do not need to repeat them:
- Who you are. Your name, your username and your membership plan go with every message.
- The page you are on. Ask "when is the deadline" while reading a competition and it knows which competition you mean.
- Pricing, plan names and help articles. These are looked up fresh for each message rather than remembered from earlier in the chat.
An image is seen only on the message it came with
Attachments are not carried forward. An image you attach is looked at for that message and is not sent again on the next one, so referring back to "the drawing I sent" does not work. Attach it again with the message you want it considered for.
Chats do not share memory with each other
Each chat is its own conversation. A new chat starts with nothing from the old one, and something you explained in one chat never reaches another. There is no running profile being built from what you type.
What to do about it
- Restate the fact that matters once a thread has run long: "the entry I mean is my Reimagining Cairo submission".
- Start a fresh chat when the subject changes. A long chat that has wandered spends its ten exchanges on the old subject.
- Ask one thing at a time. Short, focused chats never hit the limit.
- Re-attach images and files rather than pointing back at them.