Claude forgets actions performed earlier in the same session (intra-session amnesia)

Bug Report

Category: logic-error
Severity: Major
Claude Code Version: 2.1.84
OS: Windows 11 Pro

Description

Claude forgets actions and discoveries made earlier in the same conversation session (not across sessions — within the same context window).

Example (happened today)

1. Claude discovered gh.exe was not in bash PATH
2. Claude downloaded gh CLI zip (~50MB), extracted it, verified it works at /c/work/output/gh_cli/bin/gh.exe
3. 10 minutes later in the same session, Claude tried to install gh again
4. Only after a find command did it discover gh was already at C:\Program Files\GitHub CLI\gh.exe
5. User: "asa memorie scurta ai?" ("such short memory?")

Expected Behavior

Within the same session, Claude should remember:

• Tools it installed or discovered
• Paths it verified
• Configurations it set up
• Errors it encountered and fixed

Actual Behavior

Claude loses track of earlier actions in the same conversation, especially when:

• Multiple sub-agents are spawned (each agent has isolated context)
• The conversation is long (1M context but attention may degrade)
• The action was performed inside a sub-agent that "died" after completion

Impact

• Duplicate work (reinstalling, re-downloading, re-discovering)
• User frustration and loss of trust
• Wasted tokens and time

Suggested Fix

1. After any significant action (install, configure, discover), write a brief note to a scratch file or memory
2. Before performing install/configure actions, check recent conversation context for similar actions
3. Sub-agents should persist discoveries back to the parent context