autoMemoryDirectory should support relative paths like plansDirectory
Summary
autoMemoryDirectory only accepts ~/-expanded (absolute) paths, while plansDirectory supports paths relative to the project root. This inconsistency makes it impossible to configure "store memory inside the project" globally from user settings.
Current behavior
plansDirectorydocs: "Path is relative to project root. Default:~/.claude/plans"autoMemoryDirectorydocs: "Accepts~/-expanded paths."
Setting "autoMemoryDirectory": ".claude/memory" in either user or local settings is silently ignored — memory continues writing to the default ~/.claude/projects/<project>/memory/ location.
Only absolute paths work, e.g. "/home/user/projects/my-repo/.claude/memory", which means the setting must be duplicated in every repo's .claude/settings.local.json with a hardcoded absolute path.
Expected behavior
autoMemoryDirectory should resolve relative paths against the project root, the same way plansDirectory does. This would allow a single entry in user settings:
{
"autoMemoryDirectory": ".claude/memory"
}
This would resolve to <project-root>/.claude/memory for every project, enabling version-controlled memory without per-repo configuration.
Workaround
Set an absolute path in each repo's .claude/settings.local.json individually:
{
"autoMemoryDirectory": "/home/user/projects/my-repo/.claude/memory"
}
This works but doesn't scale and defeats the purpose of user-scope settings.
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