The Five Files That Give Claude a Real Memory
The five files and prompts that give Claude a real memory, so it stops forgetting you the second you close the chat
Build these in order. Each part feeds the next. Everything here is plain text files you own, so it works in Claude Code, the desktop app, or the API. Nothing to install and nothing to pay for.
Part 1 of 5The memory file
One file, read before every job, appended to after every job. This is the whole trick. Keep it human readable so you can prune it, and keep one fact per line so the model can quote it back. Save it as memory.md at the root of the project.
Read memory.md before you do anything else. Treat every line in it as a decision I have already made. Do not ask me to re-explain anything that is already in there. If something in memory.md conflicts with what I just asked, say so in one line and ask which one wins. Do not guess. At the end of this session, append to memory.md: - any decision I made that changes future work - any preference I corrected you on - anything that broke, and the reason it broke One fact per line. No prose. No duplicates.
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