The working memory of a single chat, meaning everything Claude currently sees in that conversation.
The context window holds your messages, Claude's answers and uploaded files. The fuller it gets, the less focused Claude works, and on paid plans with code execution turned on, Claude summarises earlier messages near the limit. A new chat does not carry over the previous conversation, although memory can still bring something along if it is turned on. Whatever should apply permanently therefore belongs in the project instructions, the project knowledge or a rules file.
Example from Basics
In the course's fictional plant shop, the Customer Care team lead no longer pastes the report template into a new chat every Friday. It sits in the project, and every chat there knows it.
Basics: “Claude bedienen”. In the Werkbank course room, with sign-in.
Related terms
- Project instructionsThe part of a Claude project that tells Claude how to work and that applies in every chat of the project.
- Project knowledgeThe documents in a Claude project that Claude uses as background in every chat of the project.
- Rules fileA document with the permanent rules of a recurring task, in which every rule appears exactly once and hard rules are kept apart from guidance.