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Show HN: Recall – Local project memory for Claude Code

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Re: Show HN: Recall – Local project memory for Claude Code

#61

Post by smt88 »

bengotow wrote: post #60
mikeocool wrote: post #33

I apparently use Claude differently the most people who talk about using Claude on the internet. I’ll typically have a bunch of short sessions over the course of a day. Anytime I start a task that isn’t going to very directly benefit from the existing context I start fresh. I don’t find a lot of benefit in explaining the project overall to Claude — I’ve deleted a lot of that explanation from my Claude.md because it d…

This is my usage pattern and I agree it works really well. I start almost every conversation by asking Claude to read, not write. Then once it's explored a particular slice I let it rip. This takes a couple minutes (and I suppose I'm spending tokens each time), but sessions rarely reach compaction length and I like that I'm not trying to keep a whole separate pile of docs in sync.

Claude seems to read when it needs to when I ask it to do something. Did you have a different experience?

Re: Show HN: Recall – Local project memory for Claude Code

#63

Post by bfeynman »

serial_dev wrote: post #13

I might be missing out on something but I never had to explain my project. Just give it a task, or if you really want to, type it quickly, then you are good to go. I can’t imagine this being worth optimizing. The issue is never that Claude can’t figure out what the projects is about… Am I missing something or does this project not solve a problem most regular people have?

What I've finally come to understand is that there is a large amount of people who are now able to write and use software through claude and coding agents. Those people have different needs than more traditional software engineers who have more knowledge because even best llms often need steering, correction, and refactoring suggestions when iterating on code and it's fine to let it lose context because exactly like you said, you tell it to read file and then have to regurgitate the understanding so you can correct or validate it before continuing.

For those where the code is almost entirely a black box and cannot easily recover when something goes wrong. They are much more keen on this context management and planning because recovering from derailments is much harder (and takes longer) because its often a conversation with llm to try to recover to where they were before.

Re: Show HN: Recall – Local project memory for Claude Code

#67

Post by cootsnuck »

Hm, I just keep a folder called something like `status_docs/` in any project I work on and I create a new file in that folder any day I'm working on a project that's dated (e.g. `project/status_docs/2026_06_21_status.md`). It's basically a project diary that both me and the LLM can reference.

I have the LLM at some point in the day while working on the project create that file with all the relevant context. And then I'll periodically have it update that file (often before I compact the context window, or before I switch to a new task). And then I just have the LLM update it whenever I'm done working on the project for the day.

Then no matter what, if I come back that project again a day later, a week later, a month later, whatever – I just literally point a fresh session at the most recent status doc to help both me and the LLM orient ourselves to the work at hand. What's really nice too is having it reference the status docs from previous days to help orient it for creating the new status doc for the current day.

I've been doing this informally for probably over a year now, and have started formalizing it so I do it with every project. It's been a big help to me personally given all the context switching between projects I've been doing more and more since using AI coding tools.

Re: Show HN: Recall – Local project memory for Claude Code

#68

Post by egamirorrim »

mikeocool wrote: post #33

I apparently use Claude differently the most people who talk about using Claude on the internet. I’ll typically have a bunch of short sessions over the course of a day. Anytime I start a task that isn’t going to very directly benefit from the existing context I start fresh. I don’t find a lot of benefit in explaining the project overall to Claude — I’ve deleted a lot of that explanation from my Claude.md because it d…

I'm the same. Every time I see people talking about explaining the project every session I'm puzzled. I've just never had to do that.

Re: Show HN: Recall – Local project memory for Claude Code

#69

Post by hmontazeri »

Working on a project connected through multiple repos I have a project level MD file to explain each repo.

Then I let Claude create a hook it self that at the end of each conversation it starts a hook to add important stuff automatically to memory if relevant. That’s it…

Re: Show HN: Recall – Local project memory for Claude Code

#70

Post by giancarlostoro »

petee wrote: post #20
giancarlostoro wrote: post #3

I never have to because I use a ticketing system the model goes through in addition to a CLAUDE.md file with a summary, including vision, goals, non-goals etc

Any tricks to get Claude to actually use the CLAUDE.md consistently? Many times now its completely ignored it, despite being short, concise + generated by Claude itself, and I see bug reports about this that are over a year old

If you JUST updated it, have Claude re-read it, this was the biggest thing for me. If you just created it, same thing. Even though Claude created the file, it has not read it in whatever special way Claude will read that file, which is silly, but once you realize this, and have Claude read it, it makes a difference. It will always load it from a new session, but if it changes or doesn't exist when you start a session it will be stale or empty.
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