Home / Keeping the thread from day to day
Turning on memory, distinct from history
Memory keeps a chosen selection of what has been said, history keeps every conversation as it happened without a new session rereading it on its own.
Memory and history do not do the same job. History keeps every conversation as it unfolded, available to reread, but a new session does not browse it on its own. Memory, on the other hand, keeps a selection, what was judged noteworthy or explicitly asked to be kept, and reuses it in a following session without you needing to reopen the old conversation.
A separation that has disappeared
Until the end of August 2026, memory worked in two spaces with no bridge between them, a continuous summary of ordinary chat conversations on one side, a memory limited to a Cowork workspace on the other. Someone who had brought up a subject in the chat and found Cowork silent on that same subject was simply looking at the wrong one of the two spaces. This separation has disappeared, as of the date carried by the timeline below: what is said in the chat and what is said in Cowork now feed the same memory space. The exact wording of the setting that turns on this memory, and the full detail of what it retains today, remain to be checked in your own account's interface.
Why the distinction stays useful
Even merged, memory is not history. It only keeps part of what was said, the part judged worth reusing, whereas history keeps everything, including what no longer interests anyone. Relying on memory to find an exact detail from an old conversation stays fragile, for an exact detail, the right source remains the conversation itself, found again in the history. The project that groups files and instructions adds a third layer, distinct from the previous two, what is attached to it is reread by every session opened inside it, whether memory kept it or not.
A simple way to check what memory has kept is to ask directly:
Que sais-tu déjà de mon poste et des sujets que nous avons abordés ?If the answer does not mention an exchange that is nonetheless recent, the corresponding conversation remains available to consult in the history, only memory has not kept it.
Within an organisation, it is switched off to begin with
Anthropic's release notes are explicit on a point that directly concerns a cooperative or association: memory is on by default on personal accounts, and off by default on organisation accounts. If you work on an account opened by your organisation, do not look for why Claude remembers nothing, start by checking whether memory has been switched on.
Checking that memory is on
Open your account settings, look for the personal memory setting, check that it is switched on, and note what it covers today, on the chat side as well as the Cowork side, rather than assuming that a single setting automatically covers both surfaces.
Three distinct layers, a now common memory
Chat memory and Cowork memory, before and after
A person has been using Claude in the chat for several weeks and has mentioned the name of her role and her team to it several times. She then opens a Cowork session on 30 August 2026 and asks it to summarise what it already knows about her role. Cowork's answer mentions the name of her role and her team.
Write in one sentence what this situation establishes, and in one sentence what it does not establish.
What this establishes: This result establishes that, as of this date, the Cowork session has access to information previously mentioned in the chat, on the side of the now common memory.
What this does not establish: It does not establish that memory has kept the entirety of past exchanges in the chat, nor that this access already existed before the merger of the two memories.
The three most common miscalibrations
- Too broad This result shows that any information given in the chat, whatever its subject, automatically turns up in every future Cowork session.
- Too narrow This result shows nothing in particular, since a team name can appear in an answer by coincidence.
- Beside the point It establishes that memory kept the role's name because it had been repeated several times.
- Memory keeps a selection judged useful, history keeps the entirety of every conversation without a session extracting anything from it on its own.
- The separation between chat memory and Cowork memory has disappeared, both surfaces now feed the same memory space.
- An exact detail from an old conversation is found in the history, never by relying on a recall reconstructed by memory.
- What memory has kept is checked by asking Claude directly, rather than by assuming it.
- Memory is on by default on a personal account and off by default on an organisation account, which is the case for a cooperative.
Open your account's memory settings, check that it is switched on, then ask Claude what it already knows about your role to see in practice what it has kept.
These points depend on an interface or a rule that may have changed since this was written. Check them on your own screen before relying on them.
- The exact wording and path of the setting that switches personal memory on or off in the account's current interface.
- The full detail of what the merged memory retains and what it leaves aside, beyond the fact of the merge itself.
Every datable claim in this lesson links here to the public text behind it. A source that does not open proves nothing.
- Anthropic, release notes, memory common to chat and Cowork consultée le 2026-09-02