Should I keep notes from every AI chat?
Not necessarily every chat. Short factual lookups don't need to be documented. For any session where you're doing meaningful work — writing, research, planning, coding — yes.
Guide
Best way to keep notes from AI chats
If you're figuring out the best way to keep notes from AI chats, you're ahead of most people — who either lose important sessions or end up with a disorganised folder of exports they never look at again. Here's what actually works.
Why AI chat history isn't a notes system
- Every AI tool stores your conversation history in a sidebar. The problems: no full-text search, no structure beyond chronological order, platform-specific silos (your ChatGPT history is separate from your Claude history), and volume doesn't scale. 500 conversations in your sidebar is unusable.
Methods that work
- Paste key outputs immediately: when AI produces something valuable, copy it to your notes app right away. Don't save the whole conversation — save the output.
- Ask the AI for a summary at the end of each session: 'Give me a 3-bullet summary of key decisions and outputs.' Copy to your notes app with a date.
- Export conversations regularly: tools like ChatGPT Exporter get conversations into Markdown or PDF. Still manual.
- Use a second-brain tool: Notion, Obsidian, or Mem with AI integrations can organise pasted content.
One-click notes with thredly
- thredly is a Chrome extension that adds a Summarize button inside ChatGPT, Claude, and DeepSeek. Click it when a session is worth keeping and thredly stores a structured summary to your account. Gemini and Perplexity are supported by pasting into the thredly web app. The result is the notes layer for AI chats that the platforms themselves leave missing.
Related guides
Frequently asked questions
What if I use voice AI like ChatGPT's voice mode?
Voice mode conversations appear as text in the ChatGPT interface, so thredly and other text-based tools can still capture them.