Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Claude Memory

anthropic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 326 posts

Re: Claude Memory

#201

Post by Sophistifunk »

cainxinth wrote: post #23

I don't use any of these type of LLM tools which basically amount to just a prompt you leave in place. They make it harder to refine my prompts and keep track of what is causing what in the outputs. I write very precise prompts every time. Also, I try not work out a problem over the course of several prompts back and forth. The first response is always the best and I try to one shot it every time. If I don't get what…

Claude is (in my limited experience so far) more useful after a bit of back and forth where you can explain to it what's going on in your codebase. Although I suspect if you have a lot of accurate comments in your code then it will be able to extract more of that information for itself.

Re: Claude Memory

#202

Post by fluidcruft »

mbesto wrote: post #103
corry wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strong agree. For every time that I'd get a better answer if the LLM had a bit more context on me (that I didn't think to provide, but it 'knew') there seems to be a multiple of that where the 'memory' was either actually confounding or possibly confounding the best response. I'm sure OpenAI and Antropic look at the data, and I'm sure it says that for new / unsophisticated users who don't know how to prompt, that thi…

> For every time that I'd get a better answer if the LLM had a bit more context on me If you already know what a good answer is why use a LLM? If the answer is "it'll just write the same thing quicker than I would have", then why not just use it as an autocomplete feature?

For example when I'm learning a new library or technique, I often tell Claude that I'm new and learning about it and the responses tend to be very helpful to me. For example I am currently using that to learn Qt with custom OpenGL shaders and it helps a lot that Claude knows I'm not a genius about this

Re: Claude Memory

#203

Post by whoisthemachine »

joshmlewis wrote: post #182
DiskoHexyl wrote: post #150

CC barely manages to follow all of the instructions within a single session in a single well-defined repo. 'You are totally right, it's been 2 whole messages since the last reminder, and I totally forgot that first rule in claude.md, repeated twice and surrounded by a wall of exclamation marks'. Would be wary to trust its memories over several projects

How big is your claude.md file? I see people complain about this but I have only seen it happen in projects with very long/complex or insufficient claude.md files. I put a lot of time into crafting that file by hand for each project because it's not something it will generate well on its own with /init.

What's the right size claude.md file in your experience?

Re: Claude Memory

#204

Post by padolsey »

dcre wrote: post #25

"Before this rollout, we ran extensive safety 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. Through this testing, we identified areas where Claude's responses needed refinement and made targeted adjustments to how memory functions. These iterations he…

I wish they'd release some data or evaluation methodology alongside such claims. It just seems like empty words otherwise. If they did 'extensive safety testing' and don't release material, I'm gonna say with 90% certainty that they just 'vibe-red-teamed' the LLM.

Re: Claude Memory

#205

Post by dr_kiszonka »

cruffle_duffle wrote: post #116
cainxinth wrote: post #23

I don't use any of these type of LLM tools which basically amount to just a prompt you leave in place. They make it harder to refine my prompts and keep track of what is causing what in the outputs. I write very precise prompts every time. Also, I try not work out a problem over the course of several prompts back and forth. The first response is always the best and I try to one shot it every time. If I don't get what…

I completely agree. ChatGPT put all kinds of nonsense into its memory. “Cruffle is trying to make bath bombs with baking soda and citric acid” or “Cruffle is deciding between a red colored bedsheet or a green colored bedsheet”. Like great both of those are “time bound” and have no relevance after I made the bath bomb or picked a white bedsheet… All these LLM manufacturers lack ways to edit these memories either. It’s…

You can delete memories in ChatGPT and ask your bot to add a custom ones; memories can be instructions too. Gemini lets you create and edit memories.

Re: Claude Memory

#206

Post by typpilol »

whoisthemachine wrote: post #203
joshmlewis wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How big is your claude.md file? I see people complain about this but I have only seen it happen in projects with very long/complex or insufficient claude.md files. I put a lot of time into crafting that file by hand for each project because it's not something it will generate well on its own with /init.

What's the right size claude.md file in your experience?

My experience is with copilot and it uses various models, but the sweet spot is between 60 and 120 lines. With psuedo xml tags between sections

Might be different across platforms due to how stuff is setup though.

Re: Claude Memory

#207

Post by helloplanets »

brulard wrote: post #177
brookst wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty deep in this stuff and I find memory super useful. For instance, I can ask "what windshield wipers should I buy" and Claude (and ChatGPT and others) will remember where I live, what winter's like, the make, model, and year of my car, and give me a part number. Sure, there's more control in re-typing those details every single time. But there is also value in not having to.

I would say these are two distinct use cases - one is the assistant that remembers my preferences. The other use case is the clean intelligent blackbox that knows nothing about previous sessions and I can manage the context in fine detail. Both are useful, but for very different problems.

I'd imagine 99% of ChatGPT users see the app as the former. And then the rest know how to turn the memory off manually.

Either way, I think memory can be especially sneakily bad when trying to get creative outputs. If I have had multiple separate chats about a theme I'm exploring, I definitely don't want the model to have any sort of summary from those in context if I want a new angle on the whole thing. The opposite: I'd rather have 'random' topics only tangentially related, in order to add some sort of entropy in the outout.

Re: Claude Memory

#208

Post by connorshinn »

cruffle_duffle wrote: post #116
cainxinth wrote: post #23

I don't use any of these type of LLM tools which basically amount to just a prompt you leave in place. They make it harder to refine my prompts and keep track of what is causing what in the outputs. I write very precise prompts every time. Also, I try not work out a problem over the course of several prompts back and forth. The first response is always the best and I try to one shot it every time. If I don't get what…

I completely agree. ChatGPT put all kinds of nonsense into its memory. “Cruffle is trying to make bath bombs with baking soda and citric acid” or “Cruffle is deciding between a red colored bedsheet or a green colored bedsheet”. Like great both of those are “time bound” and have no relevance after I made the bath bomb or picked a white bedsheet… All these LLM manufacturers lack ways to edit these memories either. It’s…

In fairness, you can always ask Claude Code to write it's plan to an MD file, make edits to it, and then ask it to execute the updated plan you created. I suppose it's an extra step or two vs directly editing from the the terminal, but I prefer it overall. It's nice to have something to reference while the plan is being implemented

Re: Claude Memory

#209

Post by habinero »

svachalek wrote: post #159
imiric wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Humans do the same thing. We get stuck on ideas we've already had. Humans usually provide the same answer when asked the same question. LLMs almost never do, even for the exact same prompt. Stop anthropomorphizing these tools.

That is odd, are you using small models with the temperature cranked up? I mean I'm not getting word for word the same answer but material differences are rare. All these rising benchmark scores come from increasingly consistent and correct answers. Perhaps you are stuck on the stochastic parrot fallacy.

You can nitpick the idea that this or that model does or does not return the same thing _every_ time, but "don't anthropomorphize the statistical model" is just correct.

People forget just how much the human brain likes to find patterns even when no patterns exist, and that's how you end up with long threads of people sharing shamanistic chants dressed up as technology lol.

Re: Claude Memory

#210

Post by [deleted] »

labrador wrote: post #79
teeklp wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is literally insane.

I love that people hate this because that means I'm using AI in an interesting way. People will see what I mean eventually. Edit: I see the confusion. OP is talking about needing precise output for agents. I'm talking about riffing on ideas that may go in strange places.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN