With ChatGPT we can learn a lot, at times I find myself needing to know more about a particular point or wish for it to explain a particular section.
For example, if a user is learning a new programming language and asking for help to write something - if I don’t understand every line provided or am curious about what something in the code means I can highlight and “reply” to it and ask. The response gets added to the conversation, then I scroll back up to read more, and I may have about 10 questions about the one piece of code provided.
After some time the conversation becomes full of explanations and scrolling back up becomes tedious. It would be great to have a feature where instead of “Replying” in the main conversation, the replies were kept in a collapsible bubble next to the highlighted text - or some other way where it was able to be kept outside of the main chat.
This is an interesting, but likely complex feature to add, since one could technically do this in a separate ChatGPT window. However, that can be a bit clunky, especially if the information is something one is looking to retain or adds useful, relevant context.
What you’re describing essentially sounds like the way threads and replies work on sites like Reddit or Hacker News (if I’m understanding you correctly).
It would indeed be a cool feature, with the context window being limited to only a particular reply/thread/relevant context from the main conversation/etc, effectively isolating individual replies from one another. Or, these threads/replies could be rolled-up with a succinct, behind the scenes summary for added context to the main conversation.
This would be incredibly useful for things other than just coding as well. I often find myself opening up related but tangential topics, in a conversation where I want to explore something a bit more in depth without cluttering up the whole chat.
It sounds like a potentially challenging (or maybe just time-consuming) feature to build in, however, and I’m not sure how one would best go about implementing such an interesting feature without making it overly complex for the average user.
You can already do this by creating a new branch in your ChatGPT conversation. For example, if you want to learn more about a specific detail, you can ask your questions, and then, once all your questions have been answered, you can return to the starting point and rephrase your original question. ChatGPT will automatically create a new branch in the conversation and omit the unnecessary explanations from the previous branch. While this approach is still a bit clunky, it works quite well for me.