Manage Claude's memory

Claude Code can remember your preferences across sessions, like style guidelines and common commands in your workflow.

​

Determine memory type

Claude Code offers three memory locations, each serving a different purpose:

All memory files are automatically loaded into Claude Code’s context when launched.

​

CLAUDE.md imports

CLAUDE.md files can import additional files using @path/to/import syntax. The following example imports 3 files:

See @README for project overview and @package.json for available npm commands for this project.

# Additional Instructions
- git workflow @docs/git-instructions.md

Both relative and absolute paths are allowed. In particular, importing files in user’s home dir is a convenient way for your team members to provide individual instructions that are not checked into the repository. Previously CLAUDE.local.md served a similar purpose, but is now deprecated in favor of imports since they work better across multiple git worktrees.

# Individual Preferences
- @~/.claude/my-project-instructions.md

To avoid potential collisions, imports are not evaluated inside markdown code spans and code blocks.

This code span will not be treated as an import: `@anthropic-ai/claude-code`

Imported files can recursively import additional files, with a max-depth of 5 hops. You can see what memory files are loaded by running /memory command.

​

How Claude looks up memories

Claude Code reads memories recursively: starting in the cwd, Claude Code recurses up to / and reads any CLAUDE.md or CLAUDE.local.md files it finds. This is especially convenient when working in large repositories where you run Claude Code in foo/bar/, and have memories in both foo/CLAUDE.md and foo/bar/CLAUDE.md.

Claude will also discover CLAUDE.md nested in subtrees under your current working directory. Instead of loading them at launch, they are only included when Claude reads files in those subtrees.

​

Quickly add memories with the # shortcut

The fastest way to add a memory is to start your input with the # character:

# Always use descriptive variable names

You’ll be prompted to select which memory file to store this in.

​

Directly edit memories with /memory

Use the /memory slash command during a session to open any memory file in your system editor for more extensive additions or organization.

​

Memory best practices

• Be specific: “Use 2-space indentation” is better than “Format code properly”.
• Use structure to organize: Format each individual memory as a bullet point and group related memories under descriptive markdown headings.
• Review periodically: Update memories as your project evolves to ensure Claude is always using the most up to date information and context.