Notes on coding agents and the pages they leave behind, on moving between notes apps, and on the plain mechanics of keeping what you think. Written and published from a Sumibako vault.
Switching from ChatGPT to Claude: what the memory import carries, and what it leaves behind
Moving from ChatGPT to Claude: what the memory import brings across, what stays behind, and the order to move chats, projects and GPTs in.
Prashant Shaw
Founder, Sumibako
7 min read
Anthropic's page for people leaving ChatGPT is called "Switch to Claude without starting over", and it is half right. One copy and one paste really does move what ChatGPT knows about you. Your conversations, projects and custom GPTs stay where they are, like the piano the removal men quietly leave in the old house.
This is the whole move: what Claude's memory import carries, what it does not, how to bring the rest by hand, and the order to do it in so nothing is lost on the way. Everything comes from OpenAI's and Anthropic's own pages, checked on 22 October 2026. I build a notes app, which turns up once near the end.
🚚 What moves, and what stays
In ChatGPT
Comes to Claude?
How
What ChatGPT remembers about you
Yes, as a summary
Claude's memory import
Your custom instructions
By hand
Paste them into Instructions for Claude
Projects: instructions and files
By hand
Download the files, rebuild it as a Claude project
A Claude project or skill. GPTs retire on 11 December anyway
Your conversations
No
Export them from ChatGPT as a backup
Plugins and connected apps
No
Connect the same services to Claude, where a connector exists
The rest of this post goes down that table.
🧠 The memory import
Anthropic's help article says: "Memory imports are available for Free, Pro, Max, Team, and Enterprise plans on the web and Claude Desktop." So you can do this before paying anybody anything. What Claude then does with it is a post of its own.
1️⃣ In Claude, go to Settings, then Memory, and select Start import. Claude shows a prompt and a box to paste into.
2️⃣ Paste the prompt into ChatGPT. It begins: "I'm moving to another service and need to export my data. List every memory you have stored about me, as well as any context you've learned about me from past conversations."
3️⃣ Read what ChatGPT writes back before you copy it. Anthropic suggests you "customize this prompt to exclude any sensitive information before importing into Claude", and the same goes for the answer.
4️⃣ Paste it into Claude and select Add to memory. Claude "will extract key information and store it as individual memory entries."
Three things to know about what arrives:
It is ChatGPT's account of you, not a copy of its memory. The import is only as good as what ChatGPT chooses to list. If you want to see the real thing first, ChatGPT keeps it under Settings, Personalization, Memory, which I explained in the memory full post.
Claude keeps the work and may drop the rest. "Claude's memory is designed to focus on work-related topics to enhance its effectiveness as a collaborator. As a result, Claude may not retain imported personal details unrelated to work." Your coffee order may not survive the move.
Sensitive topics stay out unless you let them in. Claude's memory article says that by default it does not store topics such as health, religion or politics, and that Include sensitive topics in memory in Settings changes that.
Afterwards, check what landed. "Everything Claude remembers is listed under Topics" in Settings, Memory, and each topic can be edited or deleted.
NOTE: Some coverage described this as importing chat histories. PCWorld's headline was "Claude can now import chat histories from ChatGPT (and other AIs)". Anthropic's own import page is more careful: "Bring your preferences and context from other AI providers to Claude." It moves memory. Your chats stay in ChatGPT.
💬 Your conversations stay behind
Anthropic's import page and help article describe importing memory and preferences, and I found no Anthropic page that offers to import ChatGPT's conversation history. So the plan for your chats is a backup and a selection.
The backup. OpenAI's export page gives the steps: Settings, Data controls, then under Export data, select Export and confirm. Then wait, because "Exports can take up to 7 days to arrive", and be quick when it does: "The download link expires 24 hours after you receive it." The file is a ZIP that "includes your chat history and other relevant account data." On Business and Enterprise, "Self-service export is not available in these workspaces", so ask whoever runs yours.
The selection. Most of your chat history is questions you already have answers to. A handful of conversations hold work that is still going. For each of those, ask ChatGPT for a handoff note before you leave: where the work stands, what was decided, what is next. I wrote a template for exactly this, and it works the same in either direction. Paste the note into the first message of a new Claude chat, or into a Claude project, and the work continues.
From then on, on Pro, Max, Team and Enterprise, Claude can search your past Claude chats when you ask it to, which its memory article covers. It just has no past to search on day one.
WARNING: Do not delete your ChatGPT account until the export has arrived and you have opened it. OpenAI: "Open the ZIP file and check that it contains the conversations you need. An export cannot restore chats that have already been deleted."
🗂️ Instructions, projects and GPTs
Custom instructions. Copy them out of ChatGPT; there are up to 1,500 characters of them on Free and Go and 5,000 on paid plans, per OpenAI. In Claude, paste them under Instructions for Claude in Settings. Anthropic's personalization article: "Any instructions you add here will be applied to all of your conversations with Claude."
Projects. A ChatGPT project is instructions plus files, and so is a Claude project. In ChatGPT, copy the instructions from the project's settings, and download the files: OpenAI's projects page says you can open a file "from the project sources list to preview, download, or delete it." In Claude, create a project, paste the instructions, upload the files. On Claude's Free plan, "Free users can create a maximum of five projects", so start with the five that matter. On paid plans, Anthropic's projects article says a project's knowledge can grow "by up to 10x" by retrieving only what each chat needs.
Custom GPTs. These were retiring anyway: OpenAI switches them off on 11 December 2026. A GPT is instructions plus knowledge files, so it lands well in a Claude project, or as a skill if you want it available in every chat. I wrote up what the retirement means and how to save a GPT as one file first.
Plugins and apps. These do not move. Claude has its own connectors, on every plan including Free per the pricing page, and many services offer one for each. Connect each again and approve its permissions afresh, which is a good moment to skip the ones you stopped using.
💸 What the plans cost on each side
ChatGPT
Claude
Free
Unlimited everyday text chats, limited memory and uploads
Memory, up to five projects, connectors and skills
About $20 a month
Plus, $20
Pro, $20 monthly or $17 a month billed yearly, and it includes Claude Code
$100 and up
Pro, at $100, $200 or $500
Max, from $100, with 5 or 20 times Pro's usage
From ChatGPT's pricing and Claude's. The free plans are generous enough to run both side by side for a few weeks, which is the sensible way to switch anything: move the important work first, and see which one you open in the morning. For what each of ChatGPT's plans actually allows, I put every published limit on one page. Claude publishes multiples rather than numbers, and here is what those mean.
✅ The move, in order
1️⃣ Request the ChatGPT export today. It can take a week, so it goes first.
2️⃣ Copy your custom instructions into Instructions for Claude.
3️⃣ Run the memory import, then read your Topics in Claude and fix what is wrong.
4️⃣ Rebuild your important projects as Claude projects: instructions, then files.
5️⃣ Save each custom GPT you rely on as one file, and give it a Claude project or skill.
6️⃣ For each piece of live work, get a handoff note from ChatGPT and start it in Claude.
7️⃣ Reconnect the apps you actually use.
8️⃣ Keep ChatGPT until the export is downloaded and checked. Then cancel or delete, if you still want to.
📍 Keep the next move short
Look at what moved easily: the things that were already written down. Instructions, memory as a list, project files. What did not move was everything that only existed inside one app's conversations.
That is the argument for keeping the important stuff as documents you own, and it is where I come in, so weigh this paragraph accordingly. Sumibako is a notes app that AI assistants can read and write pages in. Keep your handoff notes, project briefs and GPT files there, and Claude can read and write them on every plan, Free included, through a custom connector. On ChatGPT, OpenAI's page on custom servers allows reading on Pro and reading and writing on Business, Enterprise and Edu. Either way, the next time you switch assistants, the move is a link rather than a weekend.
The memory import is the removal van. Your conversations are the piano. Decide which songs you still play before the van leaves.
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