---
id: "framework-clean-conversation"
type: "framework"
source_timestamps: ["00:06:23", "00:12:30"]
tags: ["workflow", "best-practices"]
related: ["concept-gather-vs-focus", "concept-context-sprawl", "claim-clean-context-cost-reduction"]
sources: ["s45-claude-limit-chatgpt-habit"]
sourceVaultSlug: "s45-claude-limit-chatgpt-habit"
originDay: 45
---
# The Clean Conversation Workflow

## Purpose
The Clean Conversation Workflow is the canonical implementation of [[concept-gather-vs-focus]]. It is the user-level recipe for delivering the **8–10x cost reduction** claimed in [[claim-clean-context-cost-reduction]] while *improving* output quality.

## The Five Steps
1. **Convert documents to Markdown.** Before any ingestion, run PDFs / Word / PPT through a Markdown converter to strip formatting metadata. See [[concept-markdown-conversion]] and [[action-convert-markdown]].
2. **Enter Gather Mode.** Use cheaper, faster models (e.g., Claude Haiku) and dedicated search tools like [[entity-perplexity-d45]] in *separate, short threads* to explore topics, run queries, and pull data.
3. **Synthesize.** Once Gather has produced answers, **stop** and extract a concise, clean summary document. This is the artifact you carry forward.
4. **Open a fresh chat for Focus Mode.** Brand-new session. Empty context. No history baggage.
5. **Provide only the synthesized summary + the execution instructions.** Use a more capable, more expensive model (e.g., Claude Opus) here if the task warrants it. The clean window means 100% of attention goes to the actual task.

## Why It Works
It structurally prevents [[concept-context-sprawl]] by making 'fresh chat' the default boundary between phases, and it concentrates spend on [[concept-smart-tokens]] (Focus) while keeping Gather tokens cheap.

## Habit Anchors
- [[action-start-fresh-chats]] — never let chats sprawl past 10–15 turns.
- [[action-use-perplexity]] — offload search to dedicated tools.
- [[framework-stupid-button-audit]] — run the diagnostic if you suspect you're slipping.

## Tagline
Gather wide and cheap. Focus narrow and powerful. Never blend the two in one window.