Show HN: Script to bulk delete Claude chats from the web UI | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Script to bulk delete Claude chats from the web UI

github.com

60 pointsML003721 comments

I haven't found a way to delete all chats in bulk like you can on Chatgpt. With Claude, you have to scroll to the bottom, select everything, and delete. The problem is, if you have a lot of chats, it becomes impossible. I created this script. It does it alone. I hope it helps someone.

(conversations disappear from the UI slowly, over several minutes, and remember to keep the tab open until the console shows "Finished", refreshing away from the page can stop the deletion process.)

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For pure, weird, late-night LLM chats, I've recently started using Qwen3.6-35B-A3B-Uncensored just running with llama-cli and it is a very refreshing chat experience.

Uncensored model means it will not deny any requests (at least I have yet to come across one), if you grew up in the 90s it sort of feels like coming across the anarchist cookbook for the first time (though with more accurate content). Using llama-cli means the session is entirely local and entirely ephemeral. As a bonus all the reasoning steps are fully visible to the user.

The base Qwen3.6-35B-A3B is more than adequate for "weird late night brainstorming chats" and I've really started to dislike the natural tendency to self-censor when the model is willing to refuse (and potentially report) any requests it feels is "inappropriate" and all these private thoughts are stored on someone else's server.

Even for work questions about sensitive IP/code Qwen3.6-35B-A3B is a great option on macOS (35t/s) when you don't want info leaving your laptop. I'm using it with oMLX.

I switched to oMLX today from lm studio. Really nice but I have found qwen3.6 sometimes failing to call tools correctly.

I use oMLX and also have this issue with qwen. Not sure what it is about oMLX + qwen but they don't seem to play well together.

I run a Gemma 4 32b abliteration (int8) and it's remarkably good. It's been a real step up from Qwen in my experience.

you can even use stuff to uncensor any foss model

Wouldn't downloading conversations be more useful? If you've input something into Claude that you don't want a future trillion-dollar US company (a bicorn?) to know, this script won't help I'm afraid. Free reminder that local AI exists and works well if you're willing to tinker a bit.

I have a similar complaint every AI chat product I've used. There's no way to multi-select conversations and delete them in a single action. It's either delete all or click on the delete button and confirm for every single one.

With many leaders in tech claiming that AI agents have drastically reduced the time and cost of shipping features, how do such small usability problems still not get fixed after years?

The Claude (and ChatGPT) web UI supports incognito/temporary chats that are discarded when you close the tab. Click the ghost or dotted speech bubble icon in the upper right corner of the page.

I use this as my default mode so I don't clutter my chat history with random, one-off questions I ask. Unfortunately, there is no way to change your mind and save a productive incognito chat after you've started chatting.

the request still went to a server you have no control over.

For all we know these temporary chats are saved and linked to your account but just don’t show up in the UI.

I believe they are. In the case of my organization's account, Incognito chats are even visible to admins.

An interesting/odd way to think about the feature is that you're not hiding the chats from other humans, but from Claude.

If the privacy policy is to be believed, they save them for 30 days for presumably investigative purposes, but do no keep them longer, permanently associate them to your account or use them for model training.

I feel like every time I try to use this feature, I get burned because I accidentally use the back touchpad gesture, or I accidentally close the tab, etc. Or, I remember one time I was using the Claude iPhone app, and I quickly switched apps to respond to a text message. My phone must have been low on memory or something, because as soon as I switched back to Claude, the app faded to the startup screen and the whole conversation was gone.

Which of course is the entire point, so I don’t really know what I want here, but what they have right now isn’t that usable IMO. Maybe a chat that lasts 24 hours? And, it would be nice if there was a way to convert an incognito chat into a persistent chat.

Which of course assumes, that the "delete chat" function actually deletes anything from Anthropic's datastore.

yeah probably https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48464258

This can be used for general organization or privacy against other people, not just trying to hide conversations from Anthropic.

How are you managing it with ChatGPT? I've always found Claude relatively easy to do it with, but unless they've changed it in the last few weeks it's hard with ChatGPT.

Edit: I should add I often want to keep one or two reference chats, so the "nuke all chats" button doesn't work for me.

Hi! for ChatGPT I go in settings -> Data Controls -> delete all chat

you are a saviour brother

Delete account. Make new.

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