Switch to Claude without starting over • Hacker News Board

Re: Switch to Claude without starting over

#191

Post by afcool83 » Sun, Mar 01, 2026, 3:55 PM UTC

Buttons840 wrote: post #190

Joeri wrote: post #13

I already switched to claude a while ago. Didn’t bring along any context, just switched subscriptions, walked away from chatgpt and haven’t touched it again. Turned out to be a non-event, there really is no moat. I switched not because I thought Claude was better at doing the things I want. I switched because I have come to believe OpenAI are a bad actor and I do not want to support them in any way. I’m pretty sure t…

I love no mote! One day I'd like to create a server in my basement that just runs a few really really nice models, and then get some friends and CO workers to pay me $10 a month for unlimited access. All with the understanding that if you hog the entire server I'm going to kick you off, and if you generate content that makes the feds knock on my door I'm turning over the server logs and your information. Don't be an…

Amazing how analogous this is to the early Internet when people started running web servers out of their basement and then eventually graduated up to being their own dial-in ISP…

Re: Switch to Claude without starting over

#192

Post by butILoveLife » Sun, Mar 01, 2026, 3:57 PM UTC

OpenAI made it easy, no import needed! How?

I bought the enterprise version, and it made it so the memory was no longer searchable...

Then after the obvious degredation in performance, I switched to claude and was happy with it... But by canceling enterprise, it lost all memory.

My wife was sad, the recipes it made were gone forever... But hey, makes it really easy to never give OpenAI money again.

Re: Switch to Claude without starting over

#193

Post by ben_w » Sun, Mar 01, 2026, 3:57 PM UTC

skeledrew wrote: post #176

ben_w wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Find all cases where you've re-invented the wheel Did you put in the original prompt the "wheels" you wanted it to use? It's a toss-up when you aren't very specific about what you want.

For the swift apps, at least half of the errors are of a type where I wouldn't expect to have needed to tell someone to not do it like that, and only a student could reasonably be expected to not know better.

For the python physics sim, step 1 was to generate the plan, the prompt included "I want actual plasma physics, including high-density, high-field regimes, externally applied fields, etc., so consider which FOSS libraries would suit this.", and then it proceeded itself to choose some existing libraries, and I made sure those specific named FOSS libraries actually ended up in the plan.

My first clue this wasn't going to work was that even from step 1 it was pushing for writing all the simulation code and not actually using e.g. WarpX despite that it itself had suggested WarpX. In fact, even when WarpX was in the plan, it was "integrate" rather than "just use this from the get-go".

I may well throw the whole thing out and try again with Claude when this trial expires. Most of the runs have been comically non-physical, to the extent you don't even need a physics degree to notice, or even a physics GCSE.

Re: Switch to Claude without starting over

#194

Post by gverrilla » Sun, Mar 01, 2026, 4:06 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…

It all depends on your usecase(s). For me, "account-wide" memory has only: (a) short description of my hardware/os/display system/etc; (b) mobile hardware and os version; and (c) my age, gender, city/country of residence, and health conditions.

Re: Switch to Claude without starting over

#195

Post by dimitri-vs » Sun, Mar 01, 2026, 4:10 PM UTC

xrd wrote: post #151

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 possi…

I think they already are. When I used the prompt with 5.2 it gives very concise and general info but if you use older models (5.1 instant or o3) you get a ton of detail.

Re: Switch to Claude without starting over

#196

Post by almosthere » Sun, Mar 01, 2026, 4:13 PM UTC

Isn't that the point of agents.md

Re: Switch to Claude without starting over

#197

Post by rudedogg » Sun, Mar 01, 2026, 4:36 PM UTC

joshstrange wrote: post #128

I’m pretty divided on “memory”. There are times it can feel almost magical but more often than not I feel like I am fighting with the steering wheel. Whenever I’m in a conversation and it references something unrelated (or even related) I get the “ick”. I know how context poisoning (intentional or not) works and I work hard to only expose things to the model that I want it to consider. There have been many times that…

I've been thinking this too. I frequently do deep research on some systems programming technique, ask it to generate a .md for it, and then I use that in later sessions with Claude Code "look at the research I collected in {*-research}.md and help me explore ways to apply it to {thing}".

At the research step it frequently (always?) uses memory to direct/scope the research to what I typically work on, but I think that kind of pigeon holes the model and what it explores. And the memory doesn't quite capture all the areas I'm interested in, or want to directly apply the research to.

And regarding the crap in memories, I found the same. Mine at work mentioned I'm an expert at a business domain I have almost zero experience with.

I feel like the companies building this stuff accept a lot of "slop" in their approach, and just can't see past building things by slopping stuff into prompts. I wish they'd explore more rigid approaches. Yes, I understand "the bitter lesson" but it seems obvious to me some traditional approaches would yield better results for the foreseeable future. Less magic (which is just running things through the cheapest model they have and dumping it in every chat). It seems like poison.

Also, agent skills are usually pure slop. If you look through https://skills.sh on a framework/topic you're knowledgeable in you'll be a bit disheartened. This stuff was pioneered by people who move fast, but I think it's now time to try and push for quality and care in the approach since these have gotten good enough to contribute to more than prototype work.

Re: Switch to Claude without starting over

#198

Post by ronsor » Sun, Mar 01, 2026, 4:41 PM UTC

samhclark wrote: post #168

layer8 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One issue is that Claude’s web search abilities are more limited, for example it can’t search Reddit and Stack Overflow for relevant content.

That's so frustrating with Claude. If I need to widely search the web or if I need it to read a specific URL I pasted, I always turn to ChatGPT. Claude seems to hit a lot more roadblocks while trying to navigate the web.

They're playing too nice. It's time to roll out the residential proxies.

Re: Switch to Claude without starting over

#199

Post by bouzouk » Sun, Mar 01, 2026, 4:42 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…

On the contrary, I cannot understand how people are seriously using LLM outside of software engineering without account-wide memory. When I ask things like "what do you think John should do next on project A?", I don’t want to have to explain in detail who is John, what is project A and what John was working on before.

Re: Switch to Claude without starting over

#200

Post by andai » Sun, Mar 01, 2026, 5:00 PM UTC

layer8 wrote: post #149

kdheiwns wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yesterday was my first time trying it. One thing that felt a bit strange to me was that I asked it something and the response was just one paragraph. Which isn't bad or anything but it felt... strange? Like I always need to preface ChatGPT/gemini/whatever question with "Briefly, what is..." or it gives me enough fluff to fill a 5 page high school essay. But I didn't need to do that and just got an answer that was to…

One issue is that Claude’s web search abilities are more limited, for example it can’t search Reddit and Stack Overflow for relevant content.

It's not that hard to roll your own web search MCP.

I made one for Crush a while ago.

https://anduil.neocities.org/blog/?page=mcp

I'm not sure about the issues with reddit though? Do they block Claude's web fetch tool? I think Codex runs it thru some kind of cache proxy.