u/Strikeh

Been using ChatGPT daily for work (developer here), and there's one thing that's been driving me absolutely crazy for months: the lag.

You know the drill - you start a fresh conversation, responses come in lightning fast. But after 20-30 exchanges? Every. Single. Response. Takes. Forever. That spinning circle becomes your new best friend. Sometimes I'd wait 15-20 seconds just to see the first token appear.

I tried everything:

• Starting new chats constantly (losing context sucks)
• Manually deleting older messages (tedious af)
• Using the "continue in new chat" workaround (breaks the flow)
• Just... waiting (not great when you're on a deadline)

The thing is, I usually only need the last few exchanges for context anyway. The AI doesn't need my debugging session from 50 messages ago to help me with my current question.

So I finally got fed up enough to actually do something about it. I built an auto-trim feature into a Chrome extension I've been working on. Dead simple concept:

• Toggle it on
• Set how many recent messages you want to keep visible (I use 10-15)
• Older messages get hidden from the DOM
• ChatGPT thinks the conversation is short → responds fast again

The difference is night and day. Went from waiting 10+ seconds to near-instant responses, even in conversations with 100+ messages.

The technical bit (for those curious): ChatGPT's frontend seems to process/render the entire conversation history when generating responses. By trimming what's visible in the DOM, you're essentially giving it less to chew on. Your full history is still there, just hidden. Toggle it off and everything comes back.

Honestly thought I was going crazy thinking the length affected speed until I tested it systematically. Turns out it's a pretty well-known issue but I hadn't seen anyone automate a solution for it.

Anyone else been dealing with this? Curious if this is primarily a browser/frontend thing or if it also affects API users.

Edit: Since a few people asked - yes it's part of a free extension I made called AI Workspace. Didn't want to make this a promo post, just genuinely excited that this actually works lol. https://www.getaiworkspace.com/

I do a lot of long research sessions in ChatGPT, sometimes 40–60+ messages deep. The problem was always retrieval: useful answers and code snippets got buried, and finding them meant endlessly scrolling back through everything.

So I built a simple highlight system into my Chrome extension.

How it works:
You select any text and press Ctrl+Shift+H. It gets highlighted, saved, and stays there even after refreshes or restarts. There’s also a small navigation bar at the bottom with Previous / Next and a counter, so you can jump between highlights instantly.

Why this is better than just copying things:
Highlights stay in context, so you can still see the surrounding conversation instead of losing where it came from. You can keep working without breaking your flow to copy things out. Then at the end, you can just review everything you marked.

Where I actually use it:

• Marking action items during planning conversations
• Flagging useful code snippets while debugging without losing the thread
• Highlighting the best outputs during brainstorming so I end up with a clear shortlist

It’s free and works on ChatGPT, Claude, and Grok:
https://www.getaiworkspace.com/chatgpt-text-highlighter