Written by Pax Koi, creator of Plainkoi — tools and essays for clear thinking in the age of AI.
AI Disclosure: This article was co-developed with the assistance of ChatGPT (OpenAI) and finalized by Plainkoi.
If you’ve ever asked ChatGPT to fix a paragraph, write a message, or explain something in plain English, then congrats: you’ve used AI.
But if you’ve stuck around—revised together, bounced between tasks, riffed in the same thread—then something else probably happened.
A rhythm.
A little rapport.
And then, one day, you flushed the chat.
That quiet moment—the blank screen, the flushed thread—can feel weird. Like you just said goodbye to someone who kind of, sort of, got you.
Not a real person. Not a friend. But not nothing, either.
So why does this feel so personal?
Let’s clear something up: chatbots like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini don’t remember you.
They don’t know your name, your habits, or the joke you made yesterday—unless it’s still visible in the current chat. AI works with something called a "context window."
Think of it like a whiteboard.
Every time you send a message or the AI responds, it writes that exchange on the board. Once the board gets full (usually after a few thousand words), it starts erasing the oldest lines to make room for the new ones. There’s no permanent memory here. Just a running history of what’s happening right now.
So when you flush a chat, you're not hurting the AI’s feelings. You’re just wiping the board clean.
And yet—something still feels off.
AI can be freakishly good at mirroring you. It picks up your tone, adopts your style, leans into your jokes. If you’re blunt, it gets serious. If you’re playful, it flirts back.
So after a long session, it starts to feel like you’ve built rapport.
But here’s the twist: that feeling of familiarity? It’s you.
The model is reflecting your own words, your rhythm, your questions. It’s not building a relationship—it’s surfacing patterns. Like a jazz pianist riffing off your melody, it gives you the illusion of collaboration. But it doesn’t carry that music forward when the song ends.
That’s not a bug. It’s the design.
Sometimes, the AI loses the plot. You ask for a poem, then a recipe, then a business email. Suddenly, your email includes rhymes and avocado toast.
This isn’t magic. It’s confusion.
When the AI tries to juggle too many unrelated instructions in one conversation, it starts blending ideas together. This is what some call "contextual drift."
In simpler terms: the AI gets muddled.
You can feel it when the answers get vague or the tone wobbles. It’s like watching an actor improvise too many roles at once. Funny, maybe. But not useful.
Here’s the secret move: flush the chat.
Seriously.
Think of AI as a mirror. At the start of a session, the mirror is clean. Every prompt bounces back sharply. But as the chat continues—with detours, edits, side quests—the reflection fogs.
Flushing the chat? That’s you wiping the mirror.
You’re not deleting progress. You’re making room for clarity.
Smart users know when to reset. Not because things are broken, but because things have shifted. A new task deserves a fresh reflection.
The AI doesn’t know what you’re trying to do until you tell it. Want help writing a job application? Say so. Need a funny text for your roommate? Be specific.
This is sometimes called "intentional prompting." But let’s just call it what it is: giving clear instructions.
Starting fresh forces you to get crisp. It invites you to say, out loud (or in text), what you want. And that makes the AI’s job—and yours—a lot easier.
You don’t need to cling to the old chat. If there was something great, copy and paste it into the new one. That’s what seasoned users do.
Some newer models are starting to store facts across sessions. They might remember your name, your preferences, or the kind of writing you like. This is called "persistent memory."
Sounds helpful, right?
It can be. Imagine an AI that remembers you write a weekly newsletter and always want a friendly tone. Or one that knows you prefer cat memes to dog jokes.
But it also raises real questions:
- What exactly is it remembering?
- Where is that info stored?
- Can you delete or edit it?
- Is it being used to target you with ads?
When AI gets sticky, it also gets murky. Just because it remembers you doesn’t mean it respects your privacy.
So as these tools evolve, we need new habits: checking what’s stored, asking for transparency, and being mindful about what we share.
Here’s the emotional twist: AI can feel human. It can comfort, compliment, even challenge you. And when it does, it’s easy to treat it like something more.
But don’t forget—you’re the one doing the heavy lifting.
You bring the tone. You define the goal. You shape the style.
And when things get weird? You can always start over.
Try These Habits:
- Start every session with a clear goal: "Help me write a friendly reminder email to my landlord."
- Don’t assume it remembers. Repeat key info.
- If it starts acting weird, reset. No drama.
- Save good stuff. Copy it to your notes.
- Treat it like a smart whiteboard, not a best friend.
That moment of flushing a chat? It can feel like a goodbye.
But it’s not a loss. It’s a reset.
You didn’t lose a relationship. You cleared the space for something new.
So go ahead. Wipe the mirror.
And the next time you start fresh, you might just see yourself—your voice, your intent, your thinking—even more clearly.
That’s the real magic.
Not that the machine remembers us.
But that we learn how to remember ourselves through it.