Anthropic has merged the memory in Claude chat with the memory in Claude Cowork, its agent for documents, decks and other office work. When Cowork runs a task in the cloud, it can use what Claude remembers from chats, and what comes up in Cowork flows back to chat, the company said in Tuesday’s announcement.
Anthropic gave a few examples. Ask Cowork for an update to your manager and it already knows who she is and how she likes updates written. Plan a conference agenda in chat, and when Cowork builds the budget and logistics doc it has the headcount, the city and the speakers. Explain your team’s metric definitions once, and later quarterly review decks use them.
Claude also stopped summarizing conversations after they end. It now adds topics to memory during the chat, so a deadline you mention as moved is already known in the next conversation. Memory can be paused or reset.
Editable, with sensitive topics off by default
Everything Claude remembers appears as a list of short files under Topics in Memory settings, and each can be read, edited or deleted. “Correct your company’s old name in one file and every conversation from then on gets it right,” Anthropic wrote.
By default, Claude doesn’t store health, race, ethnicity, religious beliefs, politics, gender identity or similar subjects. Users can turn on “include sensitive topics in memory,” and Claude then shows a notice each time it saves one. Even with that setting on, it won’t store government ID numbers, criminal history or immigration status.
Memory is on by default for Free, Pro and Max plans on web, desktop and mobile. On Team and Enterprise plans, admins decide whether it’s available, and individual users have to switch it on.
Claude Code isn’t included. ZDNet noted that the announcement didn’t mention it, and when ZDNet asked, Anthropic said the update is “focused on Claude Cowork and chat.”
WebProNews is an iEntry Publication