Projects, Memory, and Sharing

Projects: a home for recurring work

A ChatGPT project's Sources section holds uploaded files and connected context, and project instructions apply across all of its chats. Start a chat inside the project and it gets those files and instructions; start one outside a project for self-contained work. Pin a project you use often to keep it near the top of the sidebar.

Use a project for anything you'll come back to: a client account, a quarterly report, a hiring round. Put the stable material in Sources (the brand guide, the account brief, last quarter's report) and the house rules in the instructions (“Write for the client's operations team; cite the project brief for any commitment”). Every new chat then starts briefed, and you stop pasting the same context into every request.

Know the boundary: a ChatGPT project doesn't give Work access to a folder on your computer. In the desktop app, a local project is the kind that connects to folders on your machine, and ChatGPT can read and change files in every folder you attach. Attach only the folders the work needs.

Memory: a recall layer, not a rulebook

Memory lets ChatGPT carry useful context from earlier work into future work. Manage ChatGPT memory from Settings > Personalization; ChatGPT Work uses the memory settings available to your account and workspace. In the desktop app, /memories controls, for the current chat only, whether it can use existing memories and whether it can add new ones. On a Mac, the desktop app's Computer History can turn activity across the apps and websites you allow into memories and a timeline, so allow only what you're comfortable with.

OpenAI's guidance is worth taking literally: treat memories as a helpful recall layer, not as the only source for rules that must always apply. A rule that has to hold every time (a disclaimer that must appear, a client who must never be emailed directly) belongs in project instructions, a skill, or the brief, where you can see and edit it. And don't store secrets in memories.

Sharing without surprises

Chats. You can share a chat through its Share action, where available. Review the whole chat first: you're sharing the conversation, including anything you pasted or attached along the way, not only the result at the end.

Space pages. ChatGPT Space is a home for pages, slides, files and shared work. A page is a document you and ChatGPT edit together, with comments for collaborators. Two rules from OpenAI's docs: content you copy or summarize onto a page is visible to people who can access that page, and sharing a page doesn't share your private chats or saved memory. Linked files, such as a Google Drive document, keep their original permissions.

Sites. A new site is visible only to you and your workspace admins until you change its access; the Sites lesson covers the options. Before widening it, check for confidential information, secret values and third-party content.