How claude-mem works
SkillDocs & knowledgeExplains how claude-mem captures observations, when memory injection happens, and where data is stored.
Available today. Use it from your connected AI after setup.
No other account needed.
Connect ahel once, and every AI you use reads what you have installed.
Then ask your AI: use the How claude-mem works skill
About this capability
Explain how claude-mem captures observations, when memory injection kicks in, and where data lives. Use when the user asks "how does claude-mem work?" or "what is this thing doing?".
What this skill tells your AI
The instructions your AI receives, as published by thedotmack/claude-mem in plugin/skills/how-it-works/SKILL.md and read by ahel’s review.
What it does
Every Read, Edit, and Bash that Claude makes turns into a compressed observation. Observations get summarized at session end. Relevant ones get auto-injected into future prompts so the next session starts with context from the last one — no re-explaining the codebase, no re-discovering decisions.
When it kicks in
Memory injection starts on your second session in a project.
The first session in a fresh project seeds memory; subsequent sessions receive auto-injected context for relevant past work. Run /learn-codebase if you want to front-load the entire repo into memory in a single pass (~5 minutes, optional).
Where data lives
Everything stays in ~/.claude-mem on this machine.
Nothing leaves your machine except calls to whichever AI provider you configured for compression (Claude / OpenRouter / Gemini). The SQLite database, vector index, logs, and settings all live under that directory and are removed cleanly on npx claude-mem uninstall.
Signals
- GitHub stars
- 94k
- Forks
- 8k
- Last commit
- Sep 2026
- Hacker News mentions
- 1
Advanced
- Catalog kind
- skill
- Gateway key
how-it-works- Source
- github.com/thedotmack/claude-mem