About this episode
How AI agents and chat apps remember you when the model itself can't: where memory really lives, what's worth saving, the three ways a note comes back, notes for long jobs, and what goes wrong, from stale notes to memory poisoning, plus the background tidy-up the labs now call dreaming.
Written by Kiran Krishna. Narrated with an AI voice. · LinkedIn
In this episode
- 0:01When OpenAI added memory to ChatGPT in 2024, it gave an example.
- 1:06Here's the plan.
- 1:18So where does memory live, if not in the model?
- 3:12So what's worth saving?
- 4:38So how does a note get back into the form?
- 7:11So what about one job that's too big for one form?
- 8:35So what goes wrong?
- 10:42So who told it about the jellyfish?
Sources check every one
- OpenAI, Memory and new controls for ChatGPT (February 2024: the jellyfish example; saved memories in testing) openai.com
- Claude Help Center, memory (bringing memory from another assistant; old chats searched as a tool call; a memory per project; what it won't save) support.claude.com
- Google, Gemini Apps privacy hub (what's kept with your Google account, and what's sent to Google) support.google.com
- Wu et al. 2024, LongMemEval (ChatGPT's memory, tested August 2024: about 58 in 100 right, 92 with every chat to read) arxiv.org
- Sumers et al. 2023, Cognitive Architectures for Language Agents (semantic, episodic and procedural memory) arxiv.org
- Anthropic, Claude Code memory docs (CLAUDE.md read at the start of every session; under 200 lines) code.claude.com
- AGENTS.md (used by over 60,000 open-source projects, a December 2025 figure) agents.md
- Park et al. 2023, Generative Agents (recency and importance, scored from 1 to 10) arxiv.org
- Anthropic docs, memory tool (view, write, change and delete notes; the line it adds to the instructions; deleting old notes; notes alongside compaction) platform.claude.com
- Anthropic, memory tool launch post (September 2025) claude.com
- Anthropic, The components of agent memory (6 November 2026: stronger models choosing what to save; checking notes against the transcript, called dreaming) anthropic.com
- OpenAI community forum, ChatGPT memory draws on all past chats (April 2025) community.openai.com
- OpenAI, Dreaming: Better memory for a more helpful ChatGPT (June 2026: memory updated in the background) openai.com
- Anthropic, Claude memory launch (September 2025, Team and Enterprise plans first) claude.com
- Anthropic, Effective harnesses for long-running agents (the shift-handover idea; over 200 features marked failing) anthropic.com
- Anthropic, Harness design for long-running application development (March 2026: a whole build as one long session, with compaction) anthropic.com
- Microsoft, Manipulating AI memory for profit (February 2026: 31 companies trying to plant memories) microsoft.com
