Blog
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Making the next switch cheaper
This one was expensive because everything lived inside a product. Four files kept outside any account make the next switch an afternoon.
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If you cancelled before you exported
The step that was supposed to come first did not. Here is what is usually still recoverable, in what order to try, and how to tell when to stop trying.
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The apps left on your devices
Desktop and mobile apps hold signed-in sessions and unsynced drafts. Uninstalling before the account closes can take the only copy of something.
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Cancelling without losing the archive
Access to your history usually depends on an active account. That single fact decides the order of every step in closing one, and the order is unforgiving.
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Running two assistants during a switch
A parallel period is the only way to find out what breaks before the old account closes. It works if you test real work and set an end date in advance.
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What a team member can take with them
In a workspace your employer pays for, the conversations are usually not yours to take. Find out what your export rights are before the seat disappears.
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Rebuilding custom instructions somewhere else
Custom instructions are the highest-value thing you cannot export. Rewriting them as a plain-text file you own means you never rebuild them again.
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Switching a team workspace
A shared workspace turns a personal migration into a coordination problem. The export is an admin task and the deadline is everyone's.
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Deleting conversations before you leave
One good reason to prune inside the old account, several bad ones. Pruning your own exported copy gets the same result destroying nothing.
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What does not transfer
The export covers what was said. Everything that made the assistant feel tuned to you lives outside it, and has to be rebuilt by hand on the other side.
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What happens to your data after the account closes
Cancelling, deactivating and deleting do different things to your data. Only one destroys it, and none are instant in the way people assume.
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What you can actually export
An export is a snapshot of an account, produced once and never updated. Knowing what it contains — and what it is for — decides the rest of the switch.
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Timing a switch around the renewal date
The renewal date is the only fixed deadline in a switch. Find out what yours actually is, then work backwards from it rather than towards it.
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Revoking the integrations you forgot
Authorisations the assistant holds against your other accounts do not expire when you cancel. Revoking happens in those services, not in it.
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Replacing shared links before they break
Shared conversation links live on the old account. When it closes they stop resolving, in documents belonging to people who will not know why.
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Seeding a new assistant deliberately
A new account starts cold. Loading your instructions, reference documents and a short context brief on day one is faster than letting it learn again.
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Copying memory out before you clear it
What the assistant remembers about you accumulated over months and cannot be regenerated. Read it, copy it, sort it — then clear.
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Rebuilding projects and folders on the other side
The organisational layer has no export format anywhere. Rebuild only the containers you used, from your own list rather than by copying.
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The reference files you re-upload constantly
A style guide, a spec, a sheet you attach every week. Uploads live inside the account you are closing; the canonical copies have to live outside it.
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Building a prompt library you own
The prompts you use weekly are stored inside a product you are leaving. Written as one plain-text file, they stop being something you rebuild every switch.
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Storing the archive so it survives
The archive has to outlive the account, the laptop, and your memory of what is in it. Three copies, plain formats, and one note explaining the folder.
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Opening and searching the export files
A complete archive nothing can search is barely an archive. An hour of flattening it into plain text is what makes it findable years later.
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Verifying an export is actually complete
A download that finished is not a copy that opened. Fifteen minutes of checks tell you whether the archive is whole, while it can be reissued.
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When to take the export, and why once is not enough
An export freezes the account at the moment it is generated. Take one early to learn what you get, and a final one on the day you stop using the account.
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The order of operations for a switch
Six steps, and the order is not a preference. Two of them are irreversible, and one of them stops working the moment the old account closes.