Your past thinking shouldn't disappear when you switch tools.
Your ChatGPT export is too large for Claude to read directly — it'll hit file size limits and burn through your usage. Our scaffolding lets MCP index your history locally so Claude can search it on demand, pulling only what's relevant instead of swallowing the whole file.
Get set upBefore and after you connect.
- Claude starts from zero every conversation
- You re-explain your projects, your context, your preferences
- Past thinking is locked inside a platform you’re leaving
- You lose years of intellectual work
- ✓Claude can search years of your thinking in real time
- ✓Reference specific past conversations by topic or date
- ✓Build on ideas you explored months ago
- ✓Your context travels with you. Stored on your device, read by Claude when you need it — not trapped in one product
How MCP actually works
MCP (Model Context Protocol) is an open standard that lets AI tools like Claude read local files on your device. Instead of uploading data, MCP serves it to Claude on demand — only what's needed, when it's needed. Learn more about MCP →
Why not just upload your export to Claude?
You can't — and even if you could, you wouldn't want to.
What this means for your privacy
The short version: we never see your data.
Six tools PDT gives you.
Your MCP gives Claude six tools to work with your ChatGPT history. Here's what that looks like in practice.
Full-text search across all your messages
This is the workhorse. Ask Claude to find anything you’ve ever discussed — ideas, decisions, research, recommendations, arguments you worked through. Claude searches your entire history and pulls up the relevant passages.
Real workflows, compound value.
The career pivoter
I spent 18 months talking through a career change with ChatGPT — pros and cons, fears, research, salary comparisons. When I switched to Claude, I asked it to search my history for every conversation about career decisions. It synthesized 40+ conversations into a clear picture of what I actually want. I couldn’t have reconstructed that myself.
The founder
I’ve been building in public for two years — product ideas, user research, pivot decisions, technical architecture. Now when I’m writing investor updates or preparing for board meetings, I ask Claude to pull up my original reasoning for key decisions. It’s like having a perfect institutional memory.
The researcher
I use AI for literature review, hypothesis testing, and writing. Being able to search my past conversations by date range means I can trace how my thinking evolved on a topic over months. I found contradictions in my own reasoning I never would have caught.
The organizer
I coordinated mutual aid and community campaigns through ChatGPT — outreach templates, volunteer management, event planning. Now I can search all of that history when planning new campaigns. Nothing gets lost between cycles.
Get set up in 15 minutes
You'll need Claude Desktop (the app, not the website). If you don't have it yet, download it here.
Download the scaffolding
Download the MCP scaffolding folder from PDT. This is a pre-structured template — it doesn't contain your data yet. Unzip it somewhere you'll remember (like your Documents folder), alongside your ChatGPT export's conversations.json.
Find your Claude Desktop config
Claude Desktop uses a configuration file to know which MCP servers to connect to.
~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.jsonIf the file doesn't exist yet, create it.
Add the chatgpt-transformer entry
Open the config file in any text editor and add the chatgpt-transformer server. Your scaffolding folder includes a ready-to-paste config snippet — just copy it in.
{
"mcpServers": {
"chatgpt-transformer": {
"command": "npx",
"args": [
"-y",
"@anthropic/chatgpt-transformer-mcp",
"--data-dir",
"/path/to/your/unzipped/files"
]
}
}
}/path/to/your/unzipped/files with the folder containing both your scaffolding files and your conversations.json.Restart Claude Desktop
Close and reopen Claude Desktop. You should see the chatgpt-transformer tools available in your tool list.
Try it out
Start a new conversation and ask Claude something about your past:
Common questions
Ready to bring your history with you?
Download the scaffolding, point MCP at your ChatGPT export, and you're connected in minutes. We never see your data — everything runs on your machine.