Hello OpenAI Team,
I’d like to propose a feature for users working on complex, long-running projects in ChatGPT: a Living Conversation Thumbnail, maintained by a Memory Custodian.
I use ChatGPT for scientific research, document management, software development, and collaboration. Over time, conversations become extremely lengthy. Starting fresh can mean losing valuable context, overlooking previous discoveries, or repeating work.
Imagine every conversation maintaining a small, continuously updated representation of itself—something that captures what the thread contains, what was accomplished, which decisions were made, which questions remain unresolved, and which files were produced.
Ideally, this would appear alongside the conversation’s generated files, and even as a literally thumbnail attached to a thread subject lines accessible from project level, with expandable sections and links back to exact source messages and artifacts.
I’d especially value:
- Automatically updated, versioned thread summaries.
- Source-linked decisions, discoveries, and unresolved questions.
- A visual directory connecting conversations to their generated files.
- Cross-thread discovery of overlooked results, duplicate work, or contradictory decisions.
- One-click creation of a new conversation using the verified summary as a handoff.
- User controls for reviewing, correcting, excluding, exporting, and deleting summary information.
Importantly, the feature should distinguish verified facts from interpretations and preserve earlier records rather than silently overwriting them.
This could make ChatGPT significantly more effective as a long-term research and development partner while reducing unnecessary context consumption.
Even an initial version with per-thread summaries, linked artifacts, and reliable handoff generation would be incredibly useful.
Thank you for considering this suggestion.