5 ChatGPT projects to build today (with project memory)

Before everyone figures this out

Over the next few weeks, I'm going to show you how to transform ChatGPT from a fancy chatbot into your operating system.

Today, we start with a 5-project framework you can adopt. A framework that will get more powerful as ChatGPT’s project memory improves. (Or a framework you can adapt for Claude if they ever release a similar feature.)

Most people waste their projects on vanity builds that sound cool but deliver nothing. They'll create a "Twitter Helper" and an "Email Assistant" and 17 other micro-projects that fragment their knowledge and destroy their productivity.

That's not a system. That's digital hoarding with extra steps.

Important: ChatGPT's memory isn't perfect yet—but it's only going to get better with time. The people building their systems now will have compound advantage when the technology improves. Start building today, refine as it evolves.

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The memory supercharge nobody's talking about

Before we build anything, you need to understand the feature hiding in your settings: project-level memory.

ChatGPT can now remember every conversation within a project. Not just the current chat.

But only if you turn it on.

(Settings → Personalization → Reference saved memories ON, Reference chat history ON)

A word of warning from my own experience: I've noticed projects sometimes try to reference memories from your general ChatGPT chats instead of staying focused on project-specific knowledge. It's not ideal, but here's my current workaround: I only keep work-related conversations in ChatGPT and regularly audit and clear out old memories and chats that aren't relevant. Think of it as keeping a clean workspace—the cleaner your general ChatGPT environment, the better your projects perform. This isn't perfect, but it works until OpenAI (hopefully) fixes the memory isolation between projects.

This means your projects get smarter with every interaction. They build institutional knowledge. They become actual AI employees that remember their training.

Miss this step? You're building amnesia machines.

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The 5-project framework

You could build 50 projects if you wanted. But that's exactly the trap—infinite options lead to infinite waste and confusion for your LLM.

Here's a potential sequence you can build if starting from zero today: