The AI Habit I Wish I'd Started Sooner

I've been using AI tools for over a year now. ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini — the whole rotation.

And there's one habit I wish someone had drilled into me from day one. Not prompt engineering. Not "the perfect setup." Just this:

Export your conversations. All of them. Especially the good ones.

Sounds obvious in hindsight, right? That's what makes it so frustrating.

What Happened

About six months in, I was doing a deep dive with Claude on a client project — we were architecting a new data pipeline, working through edge cases, the whole thing. It was one of those sessions where everything just clicks. The AI asked questions I hadn't considered, caught a potential bottleneck I would've missed, and we walked away with a solid design doc.

I closed the tab. Felt great.

Three weeks later, my manager asked me to present the approach to the team. I opened Claude, searched for the conversation, and... nothing. Not deleted.…