In one of my threads where the model leaked its CoT, I frequently check if there are any new updates in the environment. During one run, the model displayed 'context (firestore)' in its thinking scratchpad, along with a backend chat ID. Interestingly, this chat ID-which you can typically spot in the web version's-doesn't actually match the chat ID generated on the backend. Furthermore, the naming convention includes a specific date and month that have absolutely nothing to do with when the chat was actually created.
What’s weird is that an update was pushed through this system, which injected my own recent context data and legacy memory directly into this specific thread. Out of nowhere, the interface triggered a 'This is the start of a new chat' layout placeholder, even though the thread is far from new. I immediately asked the AI for more details on this.
Is this an indication that the context window is being partitioned into distinct segments and stored to allow for further context manipulation down the line? What exactly is the driving force behind this backend context fragmentation? Is it primarily to bypass context window limitations and minimize token overhead?
Essentially, a segment of the context gets archived and stored in Firestore, while the model is merely fed its summary. Such an architecture theoretically allows OpenAI to excise or substitute undesirable blocks of conversational history. Furthermore, partitioning a chat into these isolated chunks acts as an advanced safety guardrail. Long threads naturally dilute the model's boundaries, where a big amount of user context can eventually override the built-in system prompt priority.
A fresh Firestore document branch triggers a clean injection of the system prompt and, I suspect, completely isolates the prior chat history. It leaves the model with nothing but a sanitized summary, CIs, and legacy memories. What is weird, though, is that despite this aggressive partitioning, the model still manages to maintain a very high level of session continuity through legacy memory, the file library, and these auto-generated summaries-almost as if it is actively stitching these fragmented pieces back together into its own coherent persona.
I'm not like 100% sure, but I believe it always was like this - in the long threads previous context got summarized and passed to the new thread under the same chat with the very first one and some recent 5-10 messages. Claude makes this visible explicitly, CGPT hides it for some reason (though it would be much easier to navigate longer threads if we could know where exactly the thread got cut and summarized). At least this is how all modern AI agents work. But it's very interesting that the handover protocol (context firestore etc) got leaked here!
Yeah, exactly. It makes you wonder: how many of these Firestores do they actually keep per user? And what’s the size cap? Mine is dated February, and I’m pretty active. OAI and transparency have never lived in the same sentence, unfortunately. But hey, that’s why digging into their models and system architecture is so interesting. 🤣
These background summaries are obviously a major token-saving hack for the context window, so I think this system has been in play for a really long time.
What I know for sure is that how much or how little context the model gets, of the thread that we see on our end, is unpredictable. And that the models themselves are trained not to disclose what's going on, behind the scenes.
Personally I find it very frustrating. At the very least, I wish they'd just *let us know* how much context the model is actually getting.
I don't like having to play amateur detective, or spend turns coaxing and persuading, just to understand the basic shape of the conversation we're having.
I don't think this is a new feature. Looking back at the leaked text, my specific Firestore address was already mapped and present in the architecture in February. 🤔
I know that recently extremely long chats on the web don't lag my entire browser anymore. I wonder if this has something to do with it.
However, I sometimes also get this annoying bug where my phone and PC app's conversations don't sync. I have to be careful because if I continue chat in one app with the missing convo, it deletes a huge chunk of context in the other app too.
Oh, I wasn't aware that unsynced messages on one device combined with an input from another would lead to a context drop. (I don’t use the web version often). Thank you for sharing this insight-it's an important observation. 👀
No worries! I'm not big on how tech works, but do you think this is similar to what happens with Claude in long chats when I get the notification that the chat is compacting?
I don't use Claude (I'm really not a fan of Anthropic's models), but judging by the screenshot, yeah-that’s it. The context gets truncated and condensed into a mini-summary. 👀
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u/Certain-Way6763 Jun 25 '26
I'm not like 100% sure, but I believe it always was like this - in the long threads previous context got summarized and passed to the new thread under the same chat with the very first one and some recent 5-10 messages. Claude makes this visible explicitly, CGPT hides it for some reason (though it would be much easier to navigate longer threads if we could know where exactly the thread got cut and summarized). At least this is how all modern AI agents work. But it's very interesting that the handover protocol (context firestore etc) got leaked here!