Memory is fragmented across Claude Code and Cowork for the same user/project
Summary
A user working on the same project across both Claude Code and Cowork has two separate, non-synchronized memory stores. Behavioral learnings, preferences, and feedback written in one surface do not carry over to the other, forcing the user to re-teach the assistant depending on which surface they happen to open.
The problem in practice
- Claude Code stores memory in
~/.claude/projects/<project>/memory/(local files). - Cowork has its own memory context.
- The user has worked around this by keeping a project-specific memory file inside the project itself (e.g.
Operations/Cowork/COWORK_MEMORY.md) so both surfaces can read it — but this is a manual hack, and only the in-project file is shared. Surface-specific memory files (Code'smemory/directory) are invisible to Cowork and vice versa. - Result: collaboration improvements made in a Code session (preference tightening, workflow rules) are partially lost when the user switches to Cowork for the same project, and vice versa.
Expected behavior
For a given user working on a given project, memory and learned preferences should be unified across Anthropic surfaces (Claude Code, Cowork, claude.ai), or at minimum there should be a documented, supported shared-memory mechanism rather than users hand-rolling an in-repo file.
Why this matters
The user is actively trying to build a continually-improving collaboration. Fragmented memory directly undermines that: the assistant appears to "forget" lessons simply because the user switched surfaces, even though it's the same person, same project, same goals.