ModelRefs / Conversation History — AI Glossary
Conversation History — AI Glossary
The sequence of prior turns (user and assistant messages) included in the prompt to maintain dialogue coherence. Also called chat history or message history.
Overview
Most chat APIs require the caller to maintain and resend the full conversation history each turn—there is no server-side session state in stateless REST APIs. History management decisions: how many turns to keep, when to summarize old turns, and how to inject retrieved context without exceeding context limits.
Reference details
| Topic | prompting |
|---|---|
| Also known as | chat history, message history, dialogue history |
| Last reviewed | 2026-06-24 |
Related terms
Commonly confused with
The history is the data you resend on every request; multi-turn is the property of the interaction that results. Keeping them apart is useful because the problems are different: history is a cost and truncation problem, while multi-turn behaviour is a quality problem — instruction memory, coherence, handling a topic change. Context management is the set of strategies that connect the two.
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Frequently asked questions
What is Conversation History?
The sequence of prior turns (user and assistant messages) included in the prompt to maintain dialogue coherence.
Is Conversation History the same as chat history?
Yes — chat history, message history, dialogue history are common aliases for Conversation History.
What concepts are related to Conversation History?
Closely related concepts include multi turn, context window, context management.