Axios Finish Line: Make AI remember you
Add Axios as your preferred source to
see more of our stories on Google.
Illustration: Brendan Lynch/Axios
I'm offering you four specific ways to get more out of AI this week: better prompting, improving AI memory (tonight), starting a business using AI (tomorrow) and running a business using AI (Thursday).
You nailed the perfect prompt. The output sang. You saved your Super Prompt. Then, you opened a new chat the next morning and AI acted like you'd never met.
- It's not broken. You just haven't taught it to remember YOU.
Why it matters: Master what AI stores, what it can reference from your past and how to direct both — and your chats will start smarter. This is how you unlock next-level prompting and results.
- The basics take 10 minutes. The payoff compounds forever.
A quick primer on AI memory: Think of it as two layers.
- Inside a stand-alone chat thread, AI can use what you've said there. That's called working memory. Close the chat, that brain resets.
- Lasting memory is different. It's what AI remembers about you — your job, your style, your preferences. Most people accidentally rely only on working memory and wonder why every chat starts cold. Don't.
- There's nuance to how memory works on different platforms. Easy trick: Just ask the LLM to tell you how its memory works and how to get the most out of it based on your specific needs.
🫡 Teach it on the way out. You can explicitly flag what matters to your AI's saved memory. End important chats by telling it explicitly what to keep — and what to ignore.
- The prompt: "Save this preference for future chats: I'm CEO of Axios. I write a Saturday newsletter for CEOs in Smart Brevity. I prefer short, punchy paragraphs with bold labels and concrete stats."
🔍 Audit the AI's file on you. You can see the memories AI has stored about you — and edit them. Read them like an HR file on yourself. Delete what's wrong, sharpen what's vague, add what's missing. Do this every few weeks.
- The prompt: "What saved memories do you currently have about me? List them, then suggest what I should edit, delete or add."
🔮 Mine your past. This is a new, underused move. ChatGPT and Claude (on paid plans) can search past chats if you enable the ability in your settings. That's not a chatbot — that's a coach who can review your recent thinking and spot patterns you can't.
- The prompt: "Look across my recent chats, especially the last 30, and tell me what patterns you see in how I think, write, get stuck — or repeat myself?"
🎓 Graduate to workspaces. This is where it gets powerful. Projects (in ChatGPT and Claude) and Gems (in Gemini) are lasting workspaces built around a single topic. Anything you revisit more than twice deserves one — not a stand-alone chat.
- You can add specific files and write the rules in plain English. AI can help with that.
- For my CEO newsletter project, I dropped in every column I've written, my book on leadership and speeches I've given. Then I wrote out whom I'm writing to, the tone, the length, the data sources to use and the ones to avoid.
- The more useful context you add — and the more work you do inside the project — the sharper the output.
The bottom line: AI without context is a stranger. AI with memory is a colleague who gets sharper over time. Spend 10 minutes today teaching it who you are.
📬 Send Jim the weirdest (or smartest!) thing your AI has ever remembered: [email protected].
📈 If you're a CEO or on a CEO's team: Ask to join Jim's new weekly Axios C-Suite newsletter.
