I'd be surprised to hear that lots of people don't do just this. As soon as the memory features came out I gave them a quick try and quickly turned them off.

I don't want to be held accountable to all of my previous ideas. I want each conversation to start fresh with the context that I provide. If I am exploring some library in one language stack and then I later want to look into something completely different, I don't want the conversation polluted by what it thinks I want based on the previous discussion.

I suppose for those who use it as a companion the memory is a core element. But when used as a tool it gives a significantly worse experience IME.

I always use it without logging in ‡, and make a point of starting each fresh chat in a fresh window so its perspective in one conversation isn't tainted by some random line of thinking from before. Can't stand when it makes assumptions about my intentions because I mentioned having kids before, or had talked about a different property or venture or whatever.

‡ I'd tried logging in recently and immediately it started nagging me to upgrade. Went back to using without an account and bizarrely the situation is far better.

Yeah account-level memory is a real mixed bag. I do like Anthropic's project scoped memory, that actually is useful because you get to decide what chats are useful to a given problem space.