Switch to Claude without starting over • Hacker News Board

Re: Switch to Claude without starting over

#31

Post by echelon » Sun, Mar 01, 2026, 8:40 AM UTC

cyrusmg wrote: post #28

jtokoph wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've told the LLMs that, when traveling, I don't care about nightlife and alcohol. Because they have a memory of this, when I ask for a sample itinerary for a 2 day stay in a new city, it won't waste hours in the day on the party street, wine tasting, etc. For example, instead of recommending a popular night club, it will recommend the stroll along the river to view the lit up skyline or to visit the night market ins…

So it's because they want to be more like ChatGPT instead of being more Claude Code. I guess that makes sense - bigger market

Is it?

Isn't there much more money in automating business processes than in answering consumer questions (sans ads)?

Automating software development has to be a multi-trillion dollar market. And that doesn't account for future growth.

Re: Switch to Claude without starting over

#32

Post by glth » Sun, Mar 01, 2026, 8:40 AM UTC

On a related note, I have been experimenting with a small prototype for cross-agent, device-local active memory called brAIn (https://github.com/glthr/brAIn). It delivers a personalized agent experience with everything stored locally in a single file (agent.brain), and supports reusing semantic memory across projects. In practice, this means brAIn can identify and apply behavioral patterns you have used in other contexts whenever they are relevant. (I realize the repository should include a concrete example of this, and I will update it today to add one).

Re: Switch to Claude without starting over

#33

Post by KellyCriterion » Sun, Mar 01, 2026, 8:41 AM UTC

qwertox wrote: post #14

AllegedAlec wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In online Claude I often use incognito mode precisely because I don't want results to be influenced by what we talked about earlier. It's getting rather annoying to be honest.

Keep your user prefs minimal and use project memory instead: create a new project, it will only have access to your user prefs, everything else is fresh.

exactly!

Re: Switch to Claude without starting over

#34

Post by pfix » Sun, Mar 01, 2026, 8:41 AM UTC

e1g wrote: post #26

wps wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see what you mean, but I like having a clean slate even for those one off questions. I don’t want a differing answer to a philosophical inquiry just because the LLM remembers a prior position I’ve written about you know?

FWIW, both OpenAI and Anthropic have a toggle to do a “Temporary/Incognito Chat” that does not use or update memory. I too wish this was the default, and then you could opt in at the end of the chat to save some long term aspects into memory.

That would be interesting, also at the start. As an option what to pull in. ChatGPT memory "improved" and now you normally don't even see anymore what it commits to memory!

Re: Switch to Claude without starting over

#35

Post by axseem » Sun, Mar 01, 2026, 8:41 AM UTC

Have they just added it? That's a smart move.

Re: Switch to Claude without starting over

#36

Post by rustyhancock » Sun, Mar 01, 2026, 8:42 AM UTC

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 know this is necessarily a very unpopular opinion however.

I think HN in particular as a crowd are very vulnerable to the halo effect and group think when it comes to Anthropic.

Even being generous they are only very minimally a "better actor" than OpenAI.

However, we are so enthralled by their product that we tend to let the view bleed over to their ethics.

Saying we want out tools used in line with the US constitution within the US on one particular point. Is hardly a high moral bar, it's self preservation.

All Anthropic have said is:

1. No mass domestic surveillance of Americans.

2. No fully autonomous lethal weapons yet.

My goodness that's what passes for a high moral standard? Really anything that doesn't hit those very carefully worded points is not "evil"?

Re: Switch to Claude without starting over

#37

Post by pfisherman » Sun, Mar 01, 2026, 8:44 AM UTC

knallfrosch wrote: post #9

I'd be happy if I was able to use Claude Code at all VSCode extension, "Please log in" I authorize it, it creates an API key, callback. "Hello Claude, this is a test." "Please log in." So yeah... priorities?

Why not use Claude Code from the cli and follow along in your IDE? I did not quite believe when people were telling me or understand what I was missing until I tried it, but after trying that set up I am convinced that it is superior. I don’t have any hard data to back it up, but it feels much more capable that way.

Re: Switch to Claude without starting over

#38

Post by IanCal » Sun, Mar 01, 2026, 8:45 AM UTC

deaux wrote: post #17

jjmarr wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most normal people want the LLM to remember their interests and favourite things, so they don't have to manually re-explain when asking for advice. They also don't know what "context" is or that the LLM has a limited number of tokens it can understand at any given time. They just believe it knows everything at once.

Do you have example prompts where this would be usual? Why would you want an LLM to know your favorite type of cheese? Now that I say that, I guess if you use it for recipes then it's useful if it remembers things like dietary restrictions. And even then a project seems like the better option. I can't think of much else though so I'm still curious what you or others use it for.

Can projects overlap? If not there’s general context information that’s often useful.

My job, my kids and time preferences around those things, my preferred tech setup and way of working and types of tech I’m better at. Things I already have (home assistant, little nuc, etc). I can throw a random question and not have to add this kind of information or manage it.

Re: Switch to Claude without starting over

#39

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Mar 01, 2026, 8:46 AM UTC

qwertox wrote: post #14

AllegedAlec wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In online Claude I often use incognito mode precisely because I don't want results to be influenced by what we talked about earlier. It's getting rather annoying to be honest.

Keep your user prefs minimal and use project memory instead: create a new project, it will only have access to your user prefs, everything else is fresh.

[deleted]

Re: Switch to Claude without starting over

#40

Post by hbarka » Sun, Mar 01, 2026, 8:48 AM UTC

qwertox wrote: post #14

AllegedAlec wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In online Claude I often use incognito mode precisely because I don't want results to be influenced by what we talked about earlier. It's getting rather annoying to be honest.

Keep your user prefs minimal and use project memory instead: create a new project, it will only have access to your user prefs, everything else is fresh.

I did /init and now CLAUDE.md is on several layers. I wish there was a reverse init and minimum as needed init.