What to Do When ChatGPT's Memory Fills Up

You can get deliberate with what is remembered

Jun 15, 2025

I’ve bumped into the issue with ChatGPT’s dreaded “System Memory Full” message at the top of my screen many times. Generally I just ignore it, or sometimes I’ll go and cherry-pick memories to get rid of.

This past week, when the AI referenced something from past conversations by the wrong (old) name, I decided it was time to take action.

I was reluctant to ‘burn the boat’ so to speak, I wanted to at least keep the most important things in mind, lest I forget them just like Sophia… I named ChatGPT after the original philosophers, the Sophists.

Before the wipe, I did some work by starting a new conversation. (Note that this all happened on a Mac, in a Browser, so that’s the workflow I’m sharing.) TL;DR at the bottom

Capturing Memories to Save

I write way too much in a prompt, but here’s the first prompt, in a new conversation.

So... "Saved memory full" has arrived again... it really should be something you and I can tune in a conversation instead of me finding the page that has each memory, and deleting those that seem outdated. 

What can we do to clear out some space? I'd like to figure out duplicate memories, or those that are similar, but slightly improved. Similarly, to consider purging 'old stuff' that has either been scrapped or turned into something else.

For example... I don't write on Medium at all anymore, so anything around that is irrelevant.

I stated the problem, I stated the intent, I tuned for precision.

She gave me 3 pages of text in response. Often I chastise her if she gives me too much answer too quickly, but this was a literal step by step we could use. She scoped out what we’d be doing, but I’ll summarize. If you’re playing along at home, you’ll get similar instructions anyway.

Backup the existing memories.
1. Click your avatar icon in the top right.
2. Go to Settings > Personalization > Manage Memories
3. Select all of the memories by dragging to highlight them all, then copy and paste into a text file.
4. Save the text file with a useful name, I used “all-chatgpt-saved-memories.txt” (i should have put a date. smh)
Respond to ChatGPT saying, here’s a TXT file with everything… then give it more instructions. Here’s what I said:
1. this attached TXT file has everything... lets collect memories that go together, flag stuff to get rid of, then I can go purge ALL memories, and create a fresh, new set based on the results

Note that I actually started manually deleting before I realized she’d help me prioritize, and that we’d end up purging everything.

Once we had the old stuff done, it was time to define the value of it.

Prioritization, Consolidation, Deletion

The beauty of using the AI to do this, we’re going to get different paths, and it’s going to be a collaboration between human and AI that gets us there.

In my case, we created some broader buckets, we ended up with 4 major themes, then created a small description, and then bulleted lists for key takeaways to remember, here’s a teaser:

We also flagged ‘old stuff’ that might be known under a different name, again, a teaser:

And then, a list of things to delete. I won’t bother trying to screencap each thing anymore though… YMMV.

Finally, she gave me my next steps… basically, “Delete All” then save each of these categories in a unique chat, one chat per category, stating that I wanted them saved.

We had a few back and forths to make sure her idea of what to save matched mine. One of those things was to have her interview me about the changes, sometimes this helps me spot things I wouldn’t have thought up in a simple review. By answering her questions, it made me think, not just review.

I won’t pretend this was fast, I wanted to have the new information as clear as possible, so I wanted this interview to happen while she still had the relevant memories intact. We ended up with a 5th section that was about identity, so she’d remember who I was and who she was.

Once that list was done, I did what has become a new standard behavior for me.

Add all of these groups and changes to a Canvas so we can easily find them later.

With everything that matters clearly in a canvas, with the original stuff still saved in a TXT file, I was ready to re-integrate. I saved the canvas as a PDF first, of course.

Out with the old, in with the … old, but more concise

When it comes to deleting memories, I’ve got ADHD, I get nervous about losing something… so I took her glib ‘next steps’ and pushed her to make it idiot-proof.

I asked some clarifying questions, technically this is when ChatGPT confirmed that one conversation per memory will ensure the best results. I asked if doing it inside a ChatGPT Project would still work properly, (it would) so I created a project “Memory Bootloader” to work from.

Here’s the prompt I started with for this final section, again, it’s long, but I really appreciated the results it produced:

could you flesh out a full roadmap / strategy for this for me? a step by step guide to ensure that the everything in the canvas gets stored in a manner that will ensure future you is helping me based on what matters, what i'm working on, and is less prone to hallucinations due to ambiguity. additionally I'd like to have a script for each chat that I'll use.

In an effort to keep my left hand navigation tidy, please confirm if I could create a ChatGPT Project to do this (could I just put a text file in there with teh script and automate the whole thing?)

She did state that I couldn’t automate the whole thing, I still had to do 1 chat per memory, but she gave me a memory script template that has each memory, with clear “copy/paste” indicators.

She also made it clear to test each thing. It was slightly tedious, but better than trying to pick the memories on their own. It was only going to be 5 chats anyway.

Once I was done, I moved the original conversation into the Memory Bootloader project as well, you can also upload the Canvas PDF and the original memory TXT file in just to have them available.

In theory, you should be done!

TL;DR - You do it your way

Copy all of your existing memories, paste them into ChatGPT with a prompt to organize them. I recommend saving to a TXT file, then pasting that file into the chat, as opposed to just pasting all the memories in directly
1. Emphasize that you’re wiping the old, so want to save everything, but want it organized for clarity, etc.
Have ChatGPT create a Canvas with all of these memories structured for future reference.
Have ChatGPT create a script for re-integrating memories, then follow the script.
Delete all old memories.
Use script to store new memories
Test what she knows.

A plan for moving forward

Unsurprisingly, I have a decent number of existing conversations ‘in play’ that don’t have something worth adding to memories, or that might be worth remembering, but the system had ignored them because it was full or thought it was unrelated.

I didn’t want to lose the recent stuff, so I went even further:

I feel like there are some conversations in play right now that I might want to bring their nuance into memory... is there a good strategy for that? could we take a prompt into an existing thread, ask it to evaluate if it's in memory... if so, under which heading, and if not, where might we add it

Ultimately, we decided to create a script for a prompt I can ask in any existing conversation to evaluate if it’s in memory, if it’s relevant to anything in memory, and if so, to create a script to move the important stuff into memory.

Final thoughts

Some big wins from this for me, beyond a MUCH smaller memory footprint, were little tricks about what ChatGPT likes.

I’m used to dumping to TXT files, but after one of the side conversations, I’ll be prioritizing MD files for output in the future.
Having the Memory Bootloader created an unexpected place to play with memories. It won’t be used for everything, but having a place that has my historical conversations, as well as old memories, feels reassuring.

After it was all done, I started a new conversation inside the Memory Bootloader, to see just how much she remembered.

Bonus Prompts

Status Conversation - This is to see what the memory looks like, or to evaluate "what you know about me" right now (June 11th, 2025) 

What are my top 3 struggles, my favorite topics, and my 3 areas for growth?

Am I employed? What do I do for a living?

You're my friend, you know me well, and I've asked you to write a referral letter for a job. The company I'm looking to get hired by has just about every job open, short of the c-suite or senior level positions. Write a referral letter to recommend me for the job you think would be my best fit, make sure to clearly indicate why its a good fit and why they should hire me.

ADHD Success with AI is about actually using AI to help with managing ADHD, or AuDHD in my case. I’m sharing prompts, building tools, and helping others find a way to leverage this powerful new technology specifically for their brain.

While most of this information will be helpful to anyone using AI, it is all explicitly written and shared through the filter of my brain and lived experience.

If you’re neurodivergent, I’m also leading a community for builders, creators and founders called Chaos Cooperative. The cooperative is there to help keep us on task, to have a place to feel supported, and a place to share and ask questions. If that sounds like you, visit chaoscooperative.com and poke around and see if it clicks. I encourage you to engage a little bit, to get a feel as well.

If you have any questions, or would like to see a more specific topic covered, please comment or reach out. I love to meet curious new ND brains and help them out.