Long ChatGPT conversations tend to get slow and hard to work with over time.
While “Branch in new chat” exists, it doesn’t really solve this. It simply forks the full message history at a point in time. The new chat still includes all prior messages verbatim, so there’s no performance improvement and no way to intentionally “close” a phase of work.
Proposed Idea
Add an option like “Summarize & continue in new chat.”
When used:
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ChatGPT generates a concise summary of the conversation so far (key decisions, conclusions, assumptions, open questions).
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A new chat is created using that summary as context instead of the full history.
The original chat could remain available for reference, but the new one starts clean, fast, and focused.
Why This Is Different
“Branch in new chat” rewinds raw history.
This would compress context before branching.
Why It Matters
As chats get longer, performance and cognitive load become real issues. A summarize-and-branch workflow would make ChatGPT much easier to use for long-running projects without changing how people already interact with it.