Fresh-Eyes Reset for a Long Chat

We've been working on this for a long time and I think we're going in circles. Before your next answer, reset.

1. Summarize the goal of this conversation in two sentences, as I first described it, and then as it stands now. Point out if it drifted.
2. List the assumptions you've been making about my situation that I never actually stated.
3. List the ideas we've already tried or rejected, so we don't repeat them.
4. Now forget the approach we've been stuck on. Pretend you're a different expert seeing this for the first time, specifically a [type of expert who'd see it differently, e.g. a skeptical editor, a customer, an engineer from another field], and give me three genuinely different directions, each in two sentences.
5. Tell me which one you'd try first and the one question you need me to answer before going further.

If the conversation is too long for you to remember the start reliably, say so, and give me a short summary I can paste into a new chat instead.