Anthropic announced on Thursday a new Claude feature that some users should appreciate. Claude Memory is rolling out to more paid subscribers, starting with the Claude Max tier, which gets access immediately. The cheaper Claude Pro tier will receive Memory access in the coming days. The feature builds on Anthropic’s recent initiatives to improve the chatbot’s features to better assist users. In August, Anthropic gave Claude the ability to search past chats and reference those conversations. A month later, the Memory feature rolled out to the Claude Team and Enterprise users. Adding the feature to Claude Max and Pro users is the next natural step for Anthropic.
The Memory feature should improve the way users interact with the AI, with Claude saying in a blog post that “the friction of starting over disappears,” as the AI can now remember more details about the user and their workflows. “Every conversation now builds on the last,” Anthropic writes. “Research papers build on accumulated sources and insights. Startup pitches evolve with each iteration. Code remembers environment setup and patterns.”
The demo video below shows a user asking the AI to help write a self-review by remembering everything the user accomplished during the last quarter. The AI analyzes past chats and harvests the relevant information for the user.
How Claude Memory works
The same clip shows the Memory settings available to Claude users starting Thursday. You’ll have to turn on “Search and reference chats” and “Generate memory from chat history” in Claude’s Settings for the feature to work. These memory settings are similar to what you might find in competing products. But Anthropic says that complete transparency is what sets Claude Memory apart. Users will see exactly what Claude remembers, and they’ll be able to edit the memories via natural conversations. You’ll be able to tell the AI to focus on specific memories and forget past content.
Users will be able to tell the AI whether to start recording memories for new chats or build the memory from previous chats, as seen in the video above. Claude Memory also supports importing and exporting data. You can transfer memories from Claude to ChatGPT and Gemini or vice versa. You can also use Claude in Incognito mode if you don’t want the AI to remember specific memories. If you’re using Projects in Claude, the AI will set up separate memories for each project, ensuring that personal and work chats do not mix memories.
Anthropic also noted that it ran extensive testing “across sensitive wellbeing-related topics and edge cases—including whether memory could reinforce harmful patterns in conversations, lead to over-accommodation, and enable attempts to bypass our safeguards,” before releasing the Memory feature to ensure Claude will provide “helpful and safe responses.”
