Claude for Long-Term Projects: Projects, Memory and CLAUDE.md

Projects hold material, memory holds preferences, files hold rules. How to keep long-running work on track in the app, in coding tools and over the API.

Claude is strong at long documents and code, which makes it a good fit for long-running work. The idea: projects hold material, memory holds preferences, files hold rules.

In the app: use Projects for background

Put documents, guidelines and good examples in the project knowledge. It beats pasting them every time.

Keep project instructions to goal, tone and output format.

Each project has its own memory, so work and personal topics stay apart.

Managing memory

You can view and edit what it remembers in settings. Delete anything outdated.

Saying "remember..." or "forget..." works too.

Use an incognito chat for conversations you do not want remembered.

Coming from ChatGPT, memory import brings your preferences over. It moves preferences, not your full chat history.

In coding tools: write memory into CLAUDE.md

In coding tools such as Claude Code, the CLAUDE.md file at the project root is read at the start of every session. It is the project's long-term memory. Include:

What the project is, how to run it and how to test it.

Rules that must be followed, and why.

Pitfalls you hit and what you concluded.

Every time you fix a recurring problem, add the conclusion. When the rules grow, split them into several files and keep the main file as an index.

Over the API: no built-in memory, bring your own

Every request starts fresh. Put the background it needs into the system prompt or the messages.

Place long, fixed instructions first and use prompt caching to cut costs noticeably.

For long conversations, have the model summarize from time to time and replace old messages with the summary.

Setup steps are in the Claude API guide.

A rhythm for long projects

Start: have it read the progress file and restate where things are.

Finish: have it update the progress file with decisions and next steps only.

Weekly: delete outdated rules. Stale rules mislead more than missing ones.

To share this material across several AI tools, see keeping memory across AI tools. Related product: Claude API.