Your ChatGPT Conversations Are Disappearing Into a Black Hole

It happened again last month.

I was working on something and remembered—vaguely—that I'd already figured this out with ChatGPT a few weeks before. Had a whole back-and-forth. Got somewhere good.

So I went looking.

Clicked the search button on the sidebar. Typed a keyword. A few results came up, but not the one I needed. Tried another keyword. Nothing useful.

What did ChatGPT even title that conversation? No idea. I scrolled through the sidebar. Clicked into a few that looked promising. Nope. Nope. Maybe this one? Nope.

Five minutes in, I started doubting myself. Did I imagine this conversation? Was it in Claude? Did I actually figure this out or am I making it up?

Ten minutes later, I gave up. Opened a new chat. Spent another 15 minutes getting back to roughly where I'd already been.

Somewhere in my ChatGPT history, the original conversation still exists. I just can't find it.

ChatGPT Wasn't Built to Remember

ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini—they're all the same. Incredible at having conversations. Terrible at finding them later.

Makes sense if you think about it. OpenAI engineers are obsessing over how smart GPT-5 will be. Nobody's losing sleep over how you'll find a conversation from six months ago.

But how we use AI has changed. I use ChatGPT to plan my business. Draft blog posts. Review code. This is an extension of my brain now, and there's actually important stuff in there.

But that important stuff disappears the moment you can't remember the right keyword.

I Tested All Three. They All Suck.

ChatGPT: Full-text search exists, but slow. Hundreds of conversations? Borderline unusable.

Claude: No full-text search at all. You need the exact title. Don't remember it? Gone.

Gemini: Full-text search works until you have too many chats. Then it crawls.

ChatGPT search showing limited results

Claude sidebar with no search functionality

Gemini search results

And look at those results—you get a title and a two-line snippet. That's it. So you click, check, nope, back, click, check, nope, back. Whack-a-mole with your own conversations.

So I Built Something

A few things became obvious:

Searching by title is stupid. ChatGPT titles your conversation "Marketing Strategy Discussion." In your head, it's "that thing I figured out." You need to search actual content.

Multiple platforms is a nightmare. ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini—different tools for different jobs. Can't remember which one has "that conversation"? Now you're digging through three broken searches.

Manual organization doesn't work. "Just use folders." Tried it. Lasted three days. When a conversation ends, you close it. Nobody stops to organize. It has to be automatic.

What I Built

Chrome extension. Search all your ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini conversations in one place.

• Indexes locally (nothing goes to a server)
• Searches actual content—instantly
• Shows real previews, not useless snippets
• Click and go directly to that conversation

That one conversation you're looking for? Just type what you remember. It's there.

The Bottom Line

Your AI conversations are valuable. The platforms just don't treat them that way.

If you've ever lost 20 minutes hunting for something you know you already figured out—you know exactly what I'm talking about.