Go to Settings > Chatbot and enable Discussions.

This will add a Discussions tab where you can view a history of all the conversations that have taken place in your chatbots, presented in a human-readable format. Click a conversation to read it on the right, with its details (model, chatbot, user, IP, dates). The filters in the column headers help you find a conversation by its words, its chatbot or its user, and you can export the list with Export.

All of this data remains entirely on your server. Meow Apps does not process or store any of it. You can read this article to learn more.

You can add a list of the discussions (like ChatGPT) next to your chatbot, by using the mwai_discussions shortcode on your website so each user can see their own conversation history.

[mwai_discussions id="default" text_new_chat="+ Start New Discussion"]

You can go to Settings > Chatbot > Discussions to change the display for this shortcode: the number of discussions per page, the metadata shown under each title, and whether titles are summarized by AI. By default, when the shortcode is loaded on a page, the recent discussions are fetched every 5 seconds. If you prefer to avoid repetitive requests, you can pick a longer Refresh Interval, or choose Manually to show a refresh button instead. Retention sets how long discussions are kept before a daily task deletes them.

For Developers

If you want to customize the refresh interval with more control or implement custom logic, you can also use the mwai_discussions_refresh_interval filter. The value is in milliseconds:

add_filter( 'mwai_discussions_refresh_interval', function( $interval ) {
  return 30000; // 30 seconds
} );

Local Memory

If you enable the Local Memory option (in the Chatbot section of your chatbot), the current discussion thread will be saved in the user’s browser local storage, not in your database. The shortcuts and blocks of the last reply are kept too. This means the conversation will persist even if the user refreshes the page or navigates to a different one, effectively caching the chat locally.

However, since this is browser-based, the conversation will not be preserved if the user clears their local storage, switches devices, or uses a different browser.

History Strategy

If the model you have selected supports Responses (OpenAI) you will find a section called Advanced in your chatbot settings, in which you can choose the History Strategy, which basically dictates how the previous messages from the thread are sent into the current query history to maintain context.

Available Options

Automatic

Best choice for most users as it optimizes performance while ensuring reliability

• Default setting that intelligently chooses the best strategy for each situation
• Uses Incremental mode when a valid previous_response_id is available
• Automatically falls back to Full History mode when:
  • No previous response ID exists (first message in conversation)
  • The response ID has expired (after 30 days)
  • The response ID is invalid or corrupted

Incremental

• Uses OpenAI’s previous_response_id parameter to maintain conversation state
• Only sends the latest message instead of the entire conversation history
• More efficient in terms of:
  • Reduced token usage (potentially lower costs)
  • Faster processing times
  • Lower bandwidth usage
• Limitations:
  • Only works with valid response IDs (expire after 30 days per OpenAI policy)
  • Requires the conversation to have been initiated with Responses API
  • May fall back to Full History if response ID becomes invalid

Full History

• Sends the complete conversation history with every request
• Traditional approach used by most chat implementations
• More reliable for complex conversations with many turns
• Higher resource usage:
  • Increases token consumption
  • Larger request payloads
  • May impact response times for long conversations
• Always works regardless of conversation age or API changes