What does Claude Cowork remember?

What Cowork is, in two lines#

Cowork is Claude’s mode for multi-step work: you describe an outcome, and Claude works through the steps (searching the web, reading your files, running code) and hands back finished documents, spreadsheets or slides. It “uses the same agentic architecture that powers Claude Code, with no terminal required”, and it comes with paid plans: Pro, Max, Ultra, Team and Enterprise.

Anthropic is rolling out a “new Claude experience” that merges chat and Cowork into one conversation. If your message box no longer shows “Chat” and “Cowork” options, you have it, and any conversation can take on a Cowork task.

Local or cloud: which do you have?#

A cloud task runs “on Anthropic’s servers instead of your computer, and your sessions and files are saved to your Claude account”. It keeps going when you close your laptop, and you can open it from desktop, web or phone. A local task runs on your computer, with code in an isolated virtual machine, and needs the desktop app open the whole time.

Anything written before August 25, 2026 describes an older setup. That’s the day Anthropic’s release notes say “Memory now works across chat and Cowork in the cloud.”

What each kind of task remembers#

In the cloud, Anthropic’s example: “ask Cowork to draft an update for your manager, and it already knows who that is and how they like updates written.” The memory is the one you see in chat, with the same rules. Claude saves on its own, and you can also tell it to “remember this”, or to change or forget something; the update applies from your next conversation. By default it leaves out sensitive topics such as health unless you turn on Include sensitive topics in memory, and some things, such as government ID numbers and financial account numbers, are never saved. What Claude remembers about your personal life covers that setting.

On your computer, the task doesn’t read or add to your chat memory. Anthropic’s guide for HIPAA-ready organizations lists what Cowork keeps on the device: one folder per task “with the task’s transcript, uploaded files, and outputs”, and, elsewhere in the same local-agent-mode-sessions folder, “Data that Cowork keeps between tasks, such as memory and plugins”. That folder sits in the Claude Desktop data folder: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude on a Mac, and %APPDATA%\Claude on Windows (or %LOCALAPPDATA%\Packages\Claude_pzs8sxrjxfjjc\LocalCache\Roaming\Claude for the installer downloaded from Anthropic).

Two more things carry between tasks. Logins: Claude’s built-in browser remembers sites you sign in to “across Cowork sessions”. And scheduled tasks: Claude “saves your prompt as the task’s instructions” and runs it on your schedule. Anthropic’s scheduled-task article doesn’t mention memory, and says “Each scheduled task runs as its own Cowork session” (AI reminders covers the notifications).

Projects#

Anthropic says “Claude can remember context from tasks you’ve run in a project and apply it to future tasks in the same project. What Claude learns in one project doesn’t carry over to other projects.”

A project also shares memory with your chats outside projects, in both directions: Claude uses your account memory inside the project, and “if you have memory turned on, Claude can reference it in chats outside of projects too”. To keep a project’s memory fully separate, turn off “Use account memory” under Memory on the project’s page.

That setting matters to anyone who kept projects apart on purpose. One person on r/ClaudeAI, writing the day the merged experience began rolling out, said their Cowork memory had been files they could read in a local folder, and was now “in the cloud and only viewable through Settings”, with “Some entries didn’t carry over”, and that one project could now see another’s memory (the post, read through the Arctic Shift archive; nobody opened it live). That’s one report; Anthropic’s description says a project doesn’t use other projects’ memory.

Anthropic documents what happens to projects you made from a folder on your computer: Claude Desktop moves them into your Claude account, with “A copy of the project’s memory, if memory is on for your account.” The folders and files stay on your computer, and so do earlier sessions. On Team and Enterprise plans that happens once Chat and Cowork unified is on; until then, those projects stay on the computer.

The docs disagree on archiving. The help article says an archived project’s metadata “is removed from the UI, but is not removed locally”; Anthropic’s Cowork guide on claude.com says archiving “deletes its metadata (name, instructions, links, memory)”. If a project’s memory matters, don’t count on archive keeping it.

Instructions and files it can see#

Memory is what Claude picks up. Instructions are what you write, and Cowork reads several kinds:

• Instructions for Claude, in Settings > Your Claude (Settings > Account in the older layout), apply to every conversation. In the new Claude experience, Cowork’s old Global instructions setting “is now part of Instructions for Claude”, so check that the merged text is what you want everywhere.
• Global instructions, in Settings > Cowork, if you don’t have the new experience yet, apply to every Cowork session.
• Project instructions guide every task in that project.
• Folder instructions add context when you select a local folder on desktop, and “Claude can also update these on its own during a session.”

Files work by permission. Claude “can only read and write files in folders you’ve connected”. A cloud task reaches them through the Claude Desktop app, only while it’s open on that computer, and only for a task started on desktop or a scheduled task. When a cloud task needs a local file, “Claude fetches a copy of just that file”, and deleting the session deletes those copies. Who can read your AI’s memory covers what that means for privacy.

Apps you’ve connected (Google Drive, Gmail, Slack, or a custom connector) work in Cowork too, and Claude “can pull what it needs as it goes”.

Turn memory off for one task, and check what it saved#

To run one task without memory, open a new chat, click the “+” menu and turn off “Memory” before you send the first message. Claude won’t use or add to your memory in that task, and nothing else changes. Anthropic says the setting “is set when the task starts and can’t be changed later”.

To see what Claude saved, go to Settings > Your Claude and select “Manage” next to Your memory (Settings > Memory in the older layout). Everything is listed under Topics, where you can edit or delete each one. Deleting a conversation doesn’t delete what it taught Claude: “memory entries generated from it aren’t removed”. The docs don’t say anything different for Cowork tasks. How to make your AI forget something covers deleting memory.

If your organization still has the legacy memory (you see Memory under Settings > Capabilities), Anthropic says it “is not currently available for Cowork”. And if an owner turns memory off for the organization, Claude stops using and saving it for everyone, though Anthropic says some projects keep using their own project memory.

What the docs don’t say#

• What exactly a local task remembers. Anthropic says local memory “stays with those tasks” and lists it among the data Cowork keeps between tasks, but doesn’t say whether it’s per project, per task or shared across local tasks, or what the files look like. The r/ClaudeAI post above describes a memory folder of .md files there, MEMORY.md among them; that’s a user’s report.
• Whether old local memory joins your account memory. Only a project’s memory copy is documented as moving.
• Dispatch. Its article says “Claude remembers what you’ve worked on”, but Dispatch runs on your desktop, and the article doesn’t say whether that’s your chat memory or Cowork’s local one. Anthropic says Dispatch “isn’t available to new users”.
• Search. In the new experience, “Search doesn’t include older Cowork tasks”; you can still find them by name in Recents.

A test would settle the first two: tell Claude a made-up fact in chat, then ask for it in a cloud task and in a local one. It needs an account with a local task, and nobody has run it for this page.

Questions people ask#

Questions? Ask in r/AIMemorySystems.