How do I keep my own copy of everything I’ve told ChatGPT and Claude?

Export your history from each app, then keep it somewhere you control that grows with every new conversation. I keep mine this way and wrote the system down as a blueprint, alexandria., which your model reads and builds on your computer, turning your exports and every new conversation into plain files any model can read.

If a copy is all you want, the export alone gives you one today, in ChatGPT under Settings, Data controls, Export data, and in Claude under Settings, Privacy, Export data. What an export can’t do is keep itself current, or let your next tool use it.

Hand your model an export and it keeps a readable copy of each conversation in your files, with the export itself beside it, and a newer export brings in what came since. Every conversation in Claude Code, Codex, Cowork, and Cursor is copied in as you go, earlier ones those tools still hold included, with anything shaped like a password or key blanked out.

It all stays on your computer. Nothing leaves unless you turn on a connection yourself, such as a backup to a private repository on your own GitHub, and Alexandria’s server has no address that accepts your private files. Every change is kept in the folder’s history, so you can see and undo it.

Any model can read the files, and leaving costs nothing, because one command takes the system out of your tools and leaves your files where they are.

Show the blueprint to your model, and it’ll tell you what you’re missing, if anything.