How do I keep track of which part of a text is mine?
Facts as of October 17, 2026
In detail
The rule is simple: No revising without a previously stored original draft. Original and revision are kept separate. After every finished part, not only at the end, a fresh session without conversation history compares both versions, and a script sets out the differences word for word. That way you see at every point what was changed and decide one by one: leave it, rewrite it, take it back.
Don't rely on your memory for this. After an intense writing phase, you often no longer know what an earlier version looked like – not even your own. What isn't stored can be neither checked nor taken back. The same goes for the AI: what was only in the conversation can get lost when a long chat is summarized. What is in a file, in the knowledge store, remains. How to replace a file without losing anything is covered under How do I make sure nothing gets lost when the AI revises a file?
Pay particular attention to the moment when someone else's text is added – for example, when you paste in the result of another conversation or another AI. The original draft can then drop out of the material unnoticed.
In practice
Thomas J. Weiss wrote his play this way. At the end, asked whether there were decisions he didn't remember:
No, and I can even say that with considerable certainty. When I worked through the play, I knew exactly what had been changed in the interview process with the AI.
(Original: „Nein, und das kann ich sogar mit ziemlicher Sicherheit sagen. Als ich das Stück durchgearbeitet habe, wusste ich genau, was verändert worden war im Interviewprozess mit der KI.“)
That wasn't down to his memory. About a scene he had written himself at the beginning, before the play took a different direction, he said in the same interview:
Although I had already written a scene, I could in no way remember its structure and content anymore.
(Original: „Ich konnte mich, obwohl ich bereits eine Szene geschrieben hatte, an deren Aufbau und Inhalt in keiner Weise mehr erinnern.“)
How much the stored files achieve became clear on August 26, 2026, at the one place where they were missing. When a conversation with another model was pasted in, his own original draft of one part of the text dropped out of the material. For three other parts the comparison could be made, and the shifts in meaning in them were taken back. For this one, the chronicle recorded: “Without the original draft, this part cannot be checked and taking it back is not possible.”
Sources
- Rules of the theater project, review of 02.09.2026
- Chronicle of the theater project, review of 02.09.2026 (August 26)
- Interview on the review, blocks C and D, 02.09.2026
Cite: Thomas J. Weiss: “How do I keep track of which part of a text is mine?” replicapong.de, as of October 17, 2026. https://replicapong.de/en/question/which-part-is-mine/ – CC BY 4.0