Re-Explaining Your Project Every Time? Dots Remembers It

The Scene: Every Chat Feels Like Meeting for the First Time

Monday morning, I sit down to draft a proposal. ChatGPT is a blank slate — and I'm re-typing the project background, client preferences, last week's conclusions all over again. I've made this mistake before: three days in a row pasting the same project context, I nearly drove myself dizzy.

What It Is (And Who's Already Using It)

OpenAI recently shipped something called Dots — it assigns each user a fixed-name assistant (mine's called Herman). It actually remembers your prior conversations, so you don't restart from zero every time. For us juggling three or four projects at once, this kind of "persistent memory" is genuinely needed. I know a freelance designer, Xiaoyang, who runs brand consulting out of Hangzhou. She spent two weeks using Herman to iterate on a client's logo — picking up from last session's feedback each time instead of re-describing the client's style from scratch.

Replicate Cost

Money: Free for now (OpenAI's new tools usually start free).
Time: From signup to first chat, under 10 minutes. I spent about 8 minutes — mostly agonizing over what to name the assistant.
Technical barrier: If you can use ChatGPT, you're good. Zero code required.
First step: Head to OpenAI's site, find the Dots entry, name your assistant (e.g., "Xiaobei"), then just start chatting.

Advice by Stage

Just starting out: No rush to try this. Get your main thing running first. When you notice yourself re-explaining the same background every week, that's the signal to come back.
1–2 clients: Worth trying. Offload client tastes, project status — next session, just ask "what did that client say last time?"
Scaling up: You're probably already juggling several tools. Treat this as a "team memory hub," but don't expect it to replace your Notion-style doc library.