A chatbot's worst enemy is page refresh

The internet just found a new villain: the refresh button. A viral post shows Claude streaming a reply, the user hits refresh, and poof — mid-thought amnesia. Why? The site uses Server‑Sent Events (SSE), a one-way “live text” pipe that dies on reload, so the chat forgets everything until the final answer is saved. The crowd is not amused. One founder says they had to build a whole workaround and calls it “very weird” that the big AI labs haven’t fixed this. Another dev flexes that tools like t3.chat keep a steady connection so the front end can reconnect instantly. Meanwhile, the peanut gallery is cackling that many chat UIs are “sloppy” — yes, the pun writes itself — and swapping horror stories like ChatGPT randomly wiping what you’ve typed after eight words. On the flip side, some users claim Google Gemini’s history just works across devices, stirring a mini migration vibe. The original post touts a WebSocket demo (a two-way live connection) that gracefully resumes mid-sentence without a database, fueling the hottest take: if indie devs can make refresh-proof chats, what’s the billion‑dollar excuse? The thread devolves into Team “just fix the basics” vs. Team “it’s complicated,” with memes about goldfish memory and “refresh roulette” keeping score.