Catch up
Many of my guests say their agent forgets everything after a few weeks. It did not forget. The terminal was closed. Here is how to bring the old session back, or ask the agent to review what you did and carry on.
- Where
- In the terminal, with Claude Code
- Size
- A quick one
- Short link
- piy.show/s123
The agent has a short memory
Many of my guests come back after a few weeks with the same complaint. The agent built half their project, and now it knows nothing about it. They explain everything again, from zero.
I shot this one on a street in Tokyo at night, because the complaint followed me there. Many guests, the same story.
The agent did not forget. The conversation was closed. A terminal was shut, a laptop went to sleep, and the next morning a new session opened with an empty memory. The old one is still there. You only have to go back to it.
Why does my agent forget my project? Prompt it yourself
Before we go on, tell me what you know about this project, and what you do not.
What closed is not what is lost
A session is one conversation. Close the window and it ends. The files the agent wrote stay in the folder, and the conversation stays on disk. Nothing is gone, it is only not open.
The habit that makes everything below work: always start the agent in the project folder. The folder is where it keeps its notes and where it looks for the last conversation. Start it from your home folder and it finds nothing, because there is nothing there.
So the first fix is not a prompt. It is one line before the prompt: go to the folder, then start.
Why start the agent in the project folder? Prompt it yourself
Write a short note in this folder about where the project stands, so a new session can read it first.
Resume the old session
Claude Code keeps every conversation. From the project folder, one flag brings the latest one back with everything it knew, and another lets you pick an older one by name.
Name a session when you finish for the day, so you can find it next week. Ask for a recap when you come back and are not sure which one it was. Clearing the screen does not delete anything: the old session stays on disk and can be reopened.
I check the commands against the current version before I put them on screen, because they change. The idea does not: the conversation is a file, and a file can be opened again.
Which command brings my old session back? Prompt it yourself
Give me a one-line recap of this session, so I can decide if it is the one I want to continue.
I can help you build yours
I build things like this with an AI agent, on my own computer. In a private session I help you do the same with your idea. Or bring it to the show, free.
Or ask it to review what you did
Sometimes the old session is not the one you want. It went in circles, or it is weeks old, or you cannot find it. Then start fresh in the folder and give the agent one job before anything else: review where we left off.
It reads the folder. The files it made, the notes, the last changes. Then it tells you where things stand and what the next step is. That is the whole catch-up, and it takes a minute.
This is my favourite of the two, because it also catches what the old session got wrong. A fresh read of the files finds the loose ends that the old conversation had stopped seeing.
How do I do this step myself? Prompt it yourself
Review where we left off: read the project folder, list what is done and what is next, then carry on with the next step.
Start with your next morning
Tomorrow, before you type anything, go to the project folder. Reopen the last session, or ask for the review. Either way you type one line, not a page.
Make it the routine. The guests who do this stop complaining about memory, because the memory was never the problem.
What do I do next? Prompt it yourself
Review where we left off, then carry on.
Do it in the terminal
I do this with Claude Code, the AI agent in the terminal. It works in a folder on your own computer, so it reads your files every time and can look things up for you.
A web chat works too, but there you paste everything in again in every new chat.
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Get Claude Code
It comes with Claude Pro, US$20 a month, paid to Anthropic. Claude's plans
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Make a folder for it, and open it
mkdir -p ~/projects/my-shop && cd ~/projects/my-shop
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Start the agent
claude
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Ask it
Review where we left off: read the project folder, list what is done and what is next, then carry on with the next step.
Never opened a terminal? In a private session I put Claude Code on your computer with you, and you start your first idea.
Prompty