Bring in a conversation from Claude or ChatGPT

Plenty of good work starts in a chat with Claude or ChatGPT. When that work turns into something your team should share, you can bring the whole conversation into Rally as a new Channel. Your teammates can read the history, Rally can build on it, and nobody has to paste forty screens of chat into a message.

Importing a conversation#

You need the Rally app on your Mac for this, and at least one Space you are allowed to add Channels to.

1. Click Import from ChatGPT or Claude (a cloud with a down arrow) at the top of the sidebar. Or right-click an empty part of the Channel list and choose Import Channel from Claude or ChatGPT. If you have a Space's pill selected, the new Channel goes in that Space.
2. A browser window opens, titled Import a conversation. It lists four steps. Click claude.ai or chatgpt.com to go there.
3. Log in to your Claude or ChatGPT account in that window.
4. Open the chat you want to bring in. A shared link to a chat works too.
5. Click Import.
6. The Import channel window asks for a Space and a Name of channel. The name starts as the chat's own title, and you can change it (up to 180 characters).
7. Click Import. Rally reads the conversation in the window. A box titled Importing conversation covers the page, which shows blurred behind it, and lists what Rally is doing, a step at a time. The page is locked while Rally reads it, so nothing you click can get in its way. A long chat with many files can take a few minutes. When it is done, the new Channel opens and the import window closes.

The Channel appears in your sidebar as soon as the import starts, but it opens only once the import has finished. To stop an import, click Cancel in the box; the half-made Channel is removed from your sidebar. If you close the import window instead, the half-made Channel is removed once Rally notices the import has stopped.

The Import button stays greyed out until you are looking at an actual conversation. Hover it and it says Open a Claude or ChatGPT chat to import it.

If the window says There is no Space to import into. Create one in Rally first., make a Space you can add to (see Spaces) and try again.

What comes across#

• The conversation itself: what you wrote and what the assistant replied, in order. Your side shows as the Claude or ChatGPT user, with a small cloud icon that says who imported it.
• Attached files are copied into Rally, up to 25 MB each. A bigger file is left behind and listed as unavailable.
• Not the behind-the-scenes steps, such as the assistant's thinking or the tools it used. Only what you could see in the chat comes across.
• A file Rally found but could not copy is listed in the Channel as unavailable, with the reason, so you know it is missing.

There is no preview before importing, so open the right chat before you click.

Rally treats the imported conversation as background: something it has read, not something it said. It does not start working on anything when the import finishes. Ask it for something when you are ready.

Pulling in new messages later#

Conversations have a habit of carrying on. If you keep chatting in Claude or ChatGPT after importing, you can bring the new messages into the same Channel instead of importing a second copy.

1. Open the imported Channel's main conversation (not a Breakout).
2. Click the Channel's name in its title pill, choose More, then Import updates.
3. The Import source updates window says Rally will read the conversation again in its browser. Click Import updates. The import window opens on the original conversation.
4. Click Import updates in the import window. Rally reads the conversation again, the same way as the first time.

When it finishes, the window closes and any new messages appear in the Channel. There is no summary. If nothing had changed, nothing is added.

How updates work#

• Only from the same conversation. Rally remembers exactly which conversation the Channel came from and rereads that one. There is no way to point it at a different chat. To bring in another conversation, import it as a new Channel.
• Through Rally's browser, with your sign-in. Rally reads the conversation in the import window, so if the site asks you to sign in again you can do it right there. Sign in to Claude or ChatGPT once in Rally's browser and updates work from then on. Shared links need no sign-in. (More on the browser in Research and the built-in browser.)
• New messages go at the end. They land after anything you and your teammates have written in Rally since the import. Nothing already in the Channel is moved, changed or removed. New attachments are copied in, with the same 25 MB limit.
• Changed messages are added, not replaced. If a message you imported has changed since (for example, a reply that was still being written when you imported), the new version arrives as a fresh message labelled Updated source message. The old one stays where it was, so you can see both.
• It does not wake Rally. The new messages are history. Rally reads them the next time it works in the Channel.
• Only when you ask. Rally never checks for updates by itself.

When an import will not go through#

If Rally cannot finish, the import window stays open with a message at the top. Fix the cause and click Import (or Import updates) again. Trying again never adds the same messages twice.

Why Rally refuses a branched conversation#

In Claude and ChatGPT you can go back and edit an earlier message, which starts a new branch of the conversation, or delete messages. Rally only ever adds to the end of a Channel, so it cannot fit a rewritten history in without making a muddle. Rather than guess, it refuses. To keep the new branch, import it as a new Channel with Import Channel from Claude or ChatGPT.

Rally reads Claude and ChatGPT through their ordinary web pages, the same ones you see, working out each page as it goes. If one of those services asks for a CAPTCHA or changes its sign-in rules, importing can stop until you get past it in the window. For a Claude conversation where you edited or regenerated a reply, Rally reads the version you currently have on screen.

Next chapter: keeping a lot of Channels in order, in Spaces, Breakouts and keeping things tidy.