Temporary Chat

Temporary chat keeps a few turns out of memory and out of the context of every later conversation. During those turns the Expert doesn’t read your memories, doesn’t write new ones, and background review never sees the content afterwards.

What “leaves no trace” actually means. Temporary turns are still written to the database, and the session still appears in your history — you can refresh the page and read it back. What gets cut is the forward path: those turns never enter the context of any later conversation, and memory extraction and self-evolution can’t read them.If you want it gone from your own view too, delete the session afterwards.

When to use it

Sensitive material

Questions involving information you don’t want the memory system to extract and store

One-off queries

Translate a line, run a calculation — nothing the Expert needs to remember

Experimentation

Testing prompt phrasings without polluting what the Expert believes about you

Asking on behalf of someone

A question for a colleague that has nothing to do with your own preferences

How to use it

Enable Temporary chat from the composer's + menu

A violet banner appears above the input to show the mode is active.

Chat normally

Interaction is identical to a normal conversation — files, tools, everything is available.

Turn it off when done

Click again to disable. Messages sent afterwards are normal turns.

The switch does not persist: refreshing the page or leaving the session turns it off. That’s deliberate (matching ChatGPT’s temporary-chat semantics), but it means you can’t assume “I turned it on yesterday, so it’s still on”. Check that the banner is visible before sending anything sensitive.

What granularity it applies at

This is the key to understanding it: the flag is per-turn, not per-session. One session can mix temporary and normal turns. If the switch is on when you send a message, that turn is tagged temporary; messages sent after you turn it off are normal.

Turn 1 (normal)     "help me read this error"          → enters later context
Turn 2 (temporary)  "here's my test key xxx…"          → never enters later context
Turn 3 (temporary)  "is this config right then"        → never enters later context
Turn 4 (normal)     "back to that error"               → enters later context,
                                                         but cannot see turns 2-3

The Expert in turn 4 sees turn 1 and not turns 2–3 — the whole turn is dropped (your message plus every reply and tool result in it), not just the line you typed. Between temporary turns, context is continuous: turn 3 can see turn 2, so follow-up questions work normally inside the mode.

Three layers of isolation

Layer	Behaviour in a temporary turn
Reading memory	Retrieval is skipped; no existing memory is injected
Writing memory	Nothing is extracted or stored; the memory tool itself is removed
Later context	The whole turn is filtered out for both normal conversations and background review

Each layer is enforced independently and none of them relies on client behaviour — the server enables temporary mode only when skip_memory is strictly true, so a malformed client can never half-enable it.

Temporary vs normal chat

Feature	Normal chat	Temporary chat
Memory retrieval	Relevant memories injected	Skipped entirely
Memory writing	Extracted automatically when it qualifies	Never written
Enters later context	Yes	No (whole turn filtered)
Triggers self-evolution	Possibly	No
Tool availability	Full	Full
Continuity within the turn	Yes	Yes
Consumes credits	Yes	Yes, identical to normal
Uploaded files	Stored in your drive	Also stored in your drive

Key numbers

Item	Value
Granularity	Per turn (not per session)
Switch persistence	None — a refresh turns it off
Server-side check	Strictly `=== true`; anything else counts as off
Filter scope	The whole turn (your message plus all replies and tool results)
Between temporary turns	Mutually visible, so follow-ups stay coherent
Billing	Unchanged

Failures and fixes

Symptom	Cause	Fix
You thought you were in temporary mode but weren’t	The switch resets on refresh or session change	Confirm the violet banner before sending
Temporary content still shows up in history	Messages are persisted; “no trace” means no forward propagation	Delete the session to remove it fully
Files from a temporary chat are still in your drive	File storage is a separate path	Delete the files manually
Temporary chat still charged credits	Temporary mode affects memory and context, not billing	Expected behaviour
You want to keep a temporary turn after all	The tag is fixed at write time	Copy the important content into a new normal message
Later conversations “forgot” what you said	That is precisely the design goal	Don’t use temporary mode when you need it remembered

When in doubt, start normal. You can always delete a memory afterwards in memory management — but a conversation that was never recorded can’t be recovered.

Verified 2026-08-12. Sources: services/core/src/routes/agent-proxy/invoke-lifecycle.ts, services/core/src/routes/agent-proxy/chat-history.ts, apps/web/src/components/agent/ChatInterface.tsx.

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Deep Dive

Temporary Chat

When to use it

Sensitive material

One-off queries

Experimentation

Asking on behalf of someone

How to use it

What granularity it applies at

Three layers of isolation

Temporary vs normal chat

Key numbers

Failures and fixes

​When to use it

Sensitive material

One-off queries

Experimentation

Asking on behalf of someone

​How to use it

​What granularity it applies at

​Three layers of isolation

​Temporary vs normal chat

​Key numbers

​Failures and fixes

When to use it

How to use it

What granularity it applies at

Three layers of isolation

Temporary vs normal chat

Key numbers

Failures and fixes