Switch to Claude without starting over • Hacker News Board

Re: Switch to Claude without starting over

#151

Post by xrd » Sun, Mar 01, 2026, 1:35 PM UTC

The prompt you can copy is this:

  I'm moving to another service and need to export my data. List every memory you have stored about me, as well as any context you've learned about me from past conversations. Output everything in a single code block so I can easily copy it. Format each entry as: [date saved, if available] - memory content. Make sure to cover all of the following — preserve my words verbatim where possible: Instructions I've given you about how to respond (tone, format, style, 'always do X', 'never do Y'). Personal details: name, location, job, family, interests. Projects, goals, and recurring topics. Tools, languages, and frameworks I use. Preferences and corrections I've made to your behavior. Any other stored context not covered above. Do not summarize, group, or omit any entries. After the code block, confirm whether that is the complete set or if any remain.

Why wouldn't a smart OpenAI PM simply add something "nefarious" on the frontend proxy to "slow down" any requests with exactly that prompt?

I bet they would get their yearly bonus by achieving their KPI goals.

Re: Switch to Claude without starting over

#152

Post by downboots » Sun, Mar 01, 2026, 1:41 PM UTC

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #142

I don't understand how people use these apps with memory enabled. I am always carefully controlling the context of each conversation. The idea that past conversations could bleed into current ones is unthinkably terrible.

If you delete a conversation, it only hides it from you. That's not delete.

Re: Switch to Claude without starting over

#153

Post by coldtrait » Sun, Mar 01, 2026, 1:47 PM UTC

As someone who can't afford to care about ethics and pay a monthly subscription fee, is there anything in the regular Claude chat that beats OpenAI?

Re: Switch to Claude without starting over

#154

Post by ericol » Sun, Mar 01, 2026, 1:53 PM UTC

coldtrait wrote: post #153

As someone who can't afford to care about ethics and pay a monthly subscription fee, is there anything in the regular Claude chat that beats OpenAI?

I regularly (Say, once a month) do a comparison of results across all Claude, Gemini and ChatGPT. Just for reasons, not that I want to see if there's any benefit in changing.

It's not "fair" in that I pay for Claude [1] and not for the others, so models availability is not complete except for Claude.

So I did like things at time in the form of how they were presented, I came to really like Sonnet's "voice" a lot over the others.

Take into account Opus doesn't have the same voice, and I don't like it as much.

[1] I pay for the lower tier of their Max offering.

Re: Switch to Claude without starting over

#155

Post by __alexander » Sun, Mar 01, 2026, 1:54 PM UTC

wps wrote: post #2

Could someone explain the appeal of account-wide memory to me? Anthropic’s marketing indicates that nothing bleeds over, but I’m just so protective of my context that I cannot imagine having even a majorly distilled version of my other chats and preferences having on weight on the output. As for certain preferences like code styling or response length, these are all fit for custom instructions, with more detailed thi…

The appeal for me is not having to constantly repeat instructions. Imagine having to repeat dietary restrictions every time you ask for a recipe.

Re: Switch to Claude without starting over

#156

Post by ben_w » Sun, Mar 01, 2026, 1:54 PM UTC

ben_w wrote: post #122

Oreb wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it depend on what type of programming you do? Doing Swift/SwiftUI work, I have exactly the opposite experience. I’ve been using both recently, and I want to use Claude alone (especially after the last week’s events), but Codex is just so much faster and better.

Swift/SwiftUI are two of the three experimental projects I'm using Codex on, the other is a physics simulation in python. It keeps trying to re-invent the wheel, does a bad job of it. The physics sim was supposed to be a thin wrapper around existing libraries, but instead of that it tried to write all the simulation code itself as a "fallback" (but it was broken), and never actually installed the real simulators that…

(Just outside edit window, I now realise I was ambiguous in this comment, it was more like "Find all cases where you've re-invented the wheel, add their removal to the planning document")

Re: Switch to Claude without starting over

#157

Post by khasan222 » Sun, Mar 01, 2026, 1:56 PM UTC

It was amazing to me how bad cursor is with using the same model I use in Claude. Even with little knowledge on how to test the llms I was able to get very minimal mvps. But I find the real trick is to have the proper tools to reign in the ai.

Thorough CLAUDE.md, that makes sure it checks the tests, lints the code, does type checks, and code coverage checks too. The more checks for code quality the better.

It’s just a bowling ball in th hands of a toddler, and needs to ramp and guide rails to knock down some pins. Fortunately we get more than 2 tries with code.

Re: Switch to Claude without starting over

#158

Post by Wowfunhappy » Sun, Mar 01, 2026, 1:57 PM UTC

downboots wrote: post #152

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #142

I don't understand how people use these apps with memory enabled. I am always carefully controlling the context of each conversation. The idea that past conversations could bleed into current ones is unthinkably terrible.

If you delete a conversation, it only hides it from you. That's not delete.

I'm not talking about deleting conversations. Anthropic's guide isn't going to actually move your conversation history anyway. The purpose of this feature is to move over specific memories which the AI can use in future responses.

But I have this feature turned off, and I cannot imagine ever wanting to turn it on, because I am always thinking carefully about what the AI "knows" when it generates a given response. For example, since I know that the AI always wants to make me happy, when I ask for an "opinion" I'm careful to not let the AI know which answer I'd prefer. I'll often try phrasing the question in different ways to see if it changes the outcome.

Re: Switch to Claude without starting over

#159

Post by christophilus » Sun, Mar 01, 2026, 1:58 PM UTC

mentalgear wrote: post #118

Never subscribed to chatGPT as it always felt shdy, but I'm thinking of renewing now with Claude instead of Gemini/Google.

Interesting. In my mind, I find Google to be the shadiest of the three. It’s the only one I don’t pay for.

Re: Switch to Claude without starting over

#160

Post by bmurphy1976 » Sun, Mar 01, 2026, 2:01 PM UTC

wps wrote: post #2

Could someone explain the appeal of account-wide memory to me? Anthropic’s marketing indicates that nothing bleeds over, but I’m just so protective of my context that I cannot imagine having even a majorly distilled version of my other chats and preferences having on weight on the output. As for certain preferences like code styling or response length, these are all fit for custom instructions, with more detailed thi…

"Stop asking me to apply the plan. I will tell you when I'm ready."

That alone drives me batty. I can easily spend a couple hours and multiple revisions iterating on a plan. Asking me me every single time if I want to apply it is obnoxious.