Anthropic has released an update that unifies the memory system between Claude chat and Claude Cowork, so context learned in one experience now carries over to the other. The company described the change as giving Cowork "the same one you use in chat," with what Claude remembers from conversations available the moment Cowork takes on a task.
Cowork is the computer-use agent Anthropic released earlier this year, and previously its session memory stayed locked inside Cowork while chat history remained separate. With the merge, users no longer need to re-explain details like a conference's headcount, city, or speakers when moving from planning in chat to having Cowork build the budget and logistics documents.
Claude now adds topics to its memory as you chat rather than summarizing a conversation when it ends, which keeps memories updated and shared between the two experiences even mid-conversation. Anthropic is also exposing what Claude has retained, letting users read, edit, or delete information on any topic.
Users can still view memories organized by topic and edit specifics from Claude's settings menu, and they can toggle "Generate memory from chats" on or off.
Sensitive topics stay out of memory by default, covering areas like health, race, ethnicity, religious beliefs, politics, and gender identity. Users can enable those topics through the sensitive-topics toggle in Memory settings, and Claude will notify them whenever such information is saved.
Anthropic says Claude will never store certain items at all, including government-issued IDs, Social Security numbers, criminal history, and immigration status, along with anything violating its acceptable use policy.
The update builds on a recent Claude for Chrome extension upgrade that made Cowork available through the plugin, and it follows months of fragmented memory behavior that sometimes resulted from design choices and other times from architecture limits. The feature is enabled by default on Free, Pro, and Max plans across web, desktop, and mobile, though iOS and Android users need to update their apps to the latest version.
For organizations, both the memory features and sensitive-topic features are off by default and subject to eligibility, and Claude won't retroactively add past conversations to its memory.
