On Tuesday, Anthropic launched a major update to how Claude remembers things. The new system combines Claude’s memory in Cowork and chat into a single memory that now bridges both services. Previously, Cowork’s memory was bound to individual projects and had nothing to do with what Claude knew about you from chat.It’s been a bit of an ongoing theme for Anthropic to bring Chat and Cowork closer together, and with this, Anthropic notes, Claude will remember what it knows about you no matter where you chat with it. That’s especially useful in Cowork, where you are more likely to do in-depth work. With the unified memory, Cowork can now remember important facts and, Anthropic argues, you won’t have to re-explain yourself as often. Cowork gets memory“Ask Cowork to draft an update for your manager, and it already knows who that is and how she likes updates written,” Anthropic explains. “Brainstorm the agenda in chat for a conference you’re organizing; when Cowork builds the budget and logistics doc, it knows the headcount, the city, and the speakers.” Credit: Anthropic.With this update, Claude now also updates the memory feature while you work with it. Previously, it would only do so after the chat ended. Since Cowork sessions could go on for hours or days, it makes sense to update these memories on the fly now.“The context you’ve built up across months of conversations — for instance, your Q3 priorities and the status of your projects — is there the moment you hand Cowork a task, and what comes up in Cowork carries back to chat,” Anthropic says.What Claude won’t rememberOne thing Anthropic notes is that Claude, by default, won’t store anything it considers sensitive in its memory. This includes health data or information about a user’s religious beliefs, race, ethnicity, and gender identity, for example. Anthropic acknowledges that for some users, this may be exactly the kind of information they want Claude to remember, so there is an option in the settings menu to include what would otherwise be sensitive topics. There does not seem to be a way to tune this to only include certain topics, though. It’s all or nothing right now.Credit: Anthropic. Some things never get stored in memory, though: sensitive identification numbers (SSN, government ID numbers, etc), criminal history, immigration status, or anything that violates Anthropic’s Acceptable Use Policy (AUP).In a bit of a sideswipe at OpenAI, an Anthropic spokesperson also notes that “Claude also remains ad-free, so nothing in memory is used for ad targeting.” OpenAI, of course, also recently launched Computer History, a feature that can optionally keep tabs on everything you do on your Mac — including in Claude — and make that part of its recallable history.Credit: Anthropic.In practice, these memory files take the form of small files that are organized by topic. You delete them but you can’t change them directly. You can, however, chat with Claude to make changes right from the settings menu.The unified memory feature is on by default for Free, Pro, and Max plans across web, desktop, and mobile. By default, the system won’t store any sensitive information, though. For users on Enterprise and Teams plans, all memory features are off by default. The post Anthropic gives chat and Cowork one memory appeared first on The New Stack.