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The Difference Between A Chat And A Project

By Nigel Guy · 2 min read

New users treat every conversation the same way — open a chat, ask, close it, open another one tomorrow for something related, and wonder why they're re-explaining themselves constantly. The tool gives you two different containers for a reason, and picking the wrong one is the single most common early mistake.

The mechanism

1. Ask "will I need this context again next week?" Yes means a project. No means a plain chat is fine, and starting one isn't a mistake.
2. Put the standing facts in the project, not in every message. The goal, the constraints, the relevant background — stated once at the project level instead of repeated in every new thread inside it.
3. Start a fresh conversation inside the project when the sub-topic changes, rather than one endless thread. The project holds the shared context; individual chats inside it can still be focused.
4. Retire a project when it's actually done. A project that's finished but still open just adds noise when you're deciding where new work belongs.

What to skip

Skip creating a project for every small task — that's what plain chats are for, and over-creating projects just recreates the scattering problem you were trying to avoid. Skip cramming unrelated goals into one project because it's convenient; a project that covers three unrelated things behaves like three chats wearing a shared folder.

Guardrails

• A project's shared context is only as good as what you put in it — garbage or stale instructions at the project level affect every conversation inside it, so review that occasionally.
• Sensitive or one-off information doesn't need to live in a project just because you're using one — keep the project's standing context to what's genuinely durable.
• Moving a chat into a project after the fact isn't always available or clean — decide up front where something belongs rather than assuming you can reorganise later.

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