Make that choice before doing the work: a Claude incognito chat cannot later be saved to history or converted into a regular chat. Anthropic's incognito instructions, checked October 24, 2026.
Decide whether the conversation itself must survive
Consider this fictional task. You want to rehearse a short question to a vendor about an unclear delivery window. You need one sentence to send, and the discussion has no continuing project role. A temporary text conversation may fit.
The task changes if the vendor's answer will become part of a project specification. You may need the reasoning, unresolved terms, and later corrections together. Put that work in a regular project chat from the start, with Memory off if that is the context choice you want.
| What you need | Choice to consider |
|---|---|
| One-off wording, with no later chat retrieval | Incognito outside the project |
| A discussion you will revisit | Regular chat |
| A continuing task alongside project sources | A chat in the relevant project |
| A keepable chat that skips memory | Turn Memory off in the + menu before the first message |
Regular Claude projects organize ongoing sources and instructions. Moving a task out of a project also means you must supply the context that this isolated discussion needs.
Keep the rehearsal concrete
You can adapt this authored prompt to a permitted, nonconfidential situation:
Help me write one clarification question for a vendor.
The delivery wording says: "Dispatch within five business days."
I need the item to arrive before [ACTUAL EVENT DATE].
I do not have a confirmed transit time or an arrival guarantee.
Draft a short question asking for the expected arrival window at
[DESTINATION], including what remains uncertain. Keep dispatch
and arrival separate. Do not invent a shipping service, transit
time, holiday calendar, prior agreement, or promised delivery date.
Do not contact the vendor.
A suitable editorial example is: “For delivery to [destination], what arrival window should I expect after dispatch, and can you confirm whether arrival before [event date] is feasible?” Replace the placeholders before sending.
“Please confirm the guaranteed five-day delivery” would change the supplied fact. Five business days describes dispatch; it does not specify transit or a guarantee. Read the proposed sentence against the original wording before keeping it.
Check the limits that affect your task
Incognito is available across Claude plans, but it is outside projects. In the new Claude experience, it opens the previous chat experience, where Claude cannot create files or run code. If the job requires a generated file or code execution, use an appropriate regular conversation. Current incognito limitations
Incognito skips existing memory and does not add future memories, but profile preferences and custom styles can still apply. It is not a way to remove all account context.
Retain the result you need before closing
Copy the reviewed vendor question to the place where you will actually use it, then check that the destination and date survived the copy. If the discussion revealed an unresolved specification, record that uncertainty with the project rather than copying a confident answer alone.
Closing the incognito chat removes your ability to retrieve it through ordinary history. Do not close it expecting to convert it later. Keep only the material you are permitted to retain in the destination you choose.
Incognito chats are excluded from training and history, with default 30-day retention. Organization policies can retain them longer; Team and Enterprise organizational exports include them, and Enterprise compliance access can apply. Retention and organization access
For a brief wording rehearsal, finish with the checked question. For continuing project work, start in the chat where the sources and later decisions need to remain available.