I've done a bunch of user interviews of ChatGPT, Pi, Gemini, etc. users and find there are two common usage patterns:
1. "Transactional" where every chat is a separate question, sort of like a Google search... People don't expect memory or any continuity between chats.
2. "Relationship-driven" where people chat with the LLM as if it's a friend or colleague. In this case, memory is critical.
I'm quite excited to see how OpenAI (and others) blend usage features between #1 and #2, as in many ways, these can require different user flows.
So HN -- how do you use these bots? And how does memory resonate, as a result?
For those cases there are quite a few things that I'd like it to memorize, like programming library preferences ("When working with dates prefer `date-fns` over `moment.js`") or code style preferences ("When writing a React component, prefer function components over class components"). Currently I feed in those preferences via the custom instructions feature, but I rarely take some time to update them, so the memory future is a welcome addition here.