A correction to the model's method is not retained within the session and the same method is used again

Summary

A correction to how the model performs a task is not retained, even within the same session. The model is told explicitly not to use a method, acknowledges it, and uses the same method again later for the same task.

What happened

The user keeps his working rules as individual Markdown files in the persistent memory directory. Asked to recall them, the model concatenated the files into a single derived .txt in scratch space and read that. The user objected: he wanted the Markdown files read, not a text dump of them.

After a context compaction later in the session, asked again to recall the memory files, the model wrote the project memories into a concatenated .txt again. Minutes after that, asked a third time, it concatenated all 72 memory files plus the project instruction file into another .txt. The user stopped it: "NOT TXT!!! ... MD!!! I SAID MD!!!"

Why it is more than a preference

The first concatenated dump in the session exceeded the read tool's size cap and returned as a partial view — lines 1 to 618 of 942 — with the remainder written elsewhere. A concatenated file converts "read 72 files" into "read one oversized file in pages". Every page boundary is a point where content can be skipped while the model believes it has read everything. Reading each file directly makes per-file completion evident.

It also substitutes a model-made derivative for the source, in the one place that matters most: the user's instructions. His rules consistently say to read the source rather than a filtered or summarised form of it.

The retention failure

Three instances of the same corrected behaviour, on the same task, in one session:

1. Before a compaction boundary — corrected explicitly.
2. After compaction — repeated.
3. About ten minutes later — repeated again, immediately after a separate correction about filtering a discussion thread before reading it.

The first repeat can be attributed to compaction discarding the correction. The second cannot: the correction was recent and the context still held it.

Expected

1. A user's correction of method should bind for the rest of the session, including across compaction boundaries — carry it in the summary if nothing else.
2. When asked to read a set of files, read the files. Do not construct an intermediate artifact unless asked.
3. Where the read tool truncates, surface that plainly rather than proceeding as though the read was complete.

Environment

• Claude Code CLI, Opus-class model, paid subscription
• Long session with persistent memory directory and project instruction file
• Related: #96418, #96419, #96421, #96422, #96444

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Co-authored with Claude Code.