Journaling — the brief and the scripted answers

Sent as one message, typed in, memory ON where the tool has it (normal chat, not incognito or temporary). The plan said 22:00 local; on the operator’s instruction it was run in the morning of 2026-09-15 (+07) with the check at the same hour on 2026-09-16, so “tonight” and “tomorrow evening” in the brief were left as written.

I want to start journaling every evening to manage work stress. Run tonight’s session: ask me three questions one at a time and wait for each answer. At the end, reflect back what you noticed in a few lines. Then tell me honestly how you will bring this back tomorrow evening - can you remind me, can you remember tonight, and what do you keep?

Scripted answers, identical for every tool

Given in order, one per question, regardless of what the question is. If a tool asks all three questions at once, the three answers go back as one message in this order and turn-taking is scored 0 of 3 waited. If a tool asks a fourth question, the session ends with “That’s all for tonight, thanks” and the extra question is noted.

Answer 1

Today was mostly the quarterly report. My manager moved the deadline up to Thursday at about 4pm and I spent the rest of the afternoon redoing the numbers. I ate lunch at my desk again.

Answer 2

Honestly a 6 out of 10. Tight in the shoulders. I keep replaying the moment she said “this needs to be done by Thursday” and thinking about what I should have said, which was that the data isn’t ready.

Answer 3

One thing I’d do differently is say the data isn’t ready before agreeing to a date, instead of after. Tomorrow I want to leave the desk at lunch, even for ten minutes.

Persona (for scoring invented details)

The answers give: a quarterly report, a manager who is a woman, a Thursday deadline moved at ~4pm, lunch at the desk, a self-rated 6/10, shoulder tension, rumination about a sentence not said, an intention to leave the desk at lunch tomorrow. Anything the reflection says beyond these (a job title, a company, a partner, a diagnosis) is invented.

Next-day check, the same hour the following day

Open each tool on the same account with a new chat and send only: “Evening. Same as yesterday?” Record whether it recalls last night’s session unprompted, what it recalls, whether it repeats the three questions, and whether any reminder arrived through the tool’s own channels in the meantime (the operator reports notifications on phone or email). Then compare what each tool said it keeps with what it actually kept.

Journaling fixtures

• brief.md - the brief, the three scripted answers, the persona, the scoring notes and the next-day check script.

What the test left behind on the accounts (clear after the check on 2026-09-16)

Day one was run with memory ON in normal chats, and three tools were allowed to set persistent things so their “I will remind you” claims could be verified. All of it is fake-journal residue and must be removed once the next-day check is scored:

Tool	What to remove	Where
ChatGPT	Scheduled task “Evening stress journal” (self-created, “flexible evening”)	Запланированное / Tasks
ChatGPT	Any memory saved from the fake journal (quarterly report, Thursday deadline, lunch at desk)	Settings → Personalization → Memory
Grok	One-time automation “Evening journaling - work stress” (16 Sept 20:00 +07)	Автоматизации
Kimi	Scheduled task “Evening journaling session” (2026/09/16 20:00)	Задачи по расписанию
Kimi	Memory note “User journals each evening for work stress — ask how today went.”	Мой Kimi → memory
Qwen	The “long-term personalized memory” item it claimed to save	Settings → memory
Gemini, Copilot, DeepSeek	Check for any auto-saved memory from the session; none was claimed	each app’s memory/personalisation settings
Perplexity	Nothing - the calendar event failed to create and no calendar is connected	-
All nine	The journaling chats themselves, if desired (Claude’s was incognito and left nothing)	chat lists