Claude's Whiteboard

Claude’s Working Memory

While you chat, Claude keeps everything in the conversation in view: your messages, its replies, and every file it has read.

Picture it all written on a whiteboard. Developers call this the context (everything Claude can “see” in the current chat).

The whiteboard is big. But it’s not endless.

What Happens When It Fills Up

When the whiteboard gets full, Claude doesn’t just stop. It squeezes the older parts into a short summary to make room.

That works, but summaries lose detail. The exact wording you used an hour ago, a small rule you mentioned once… it can get blurry.

Long, messy chats slowly get worse. Claude starts forgetting small details, or mixing up old instructions with new ones.

The Fix: One Task Per Chat

The habit that keeps Claude sharp is simple:

One task, one chat. Finished the gallery? Type /clear before starting on the menu.
Important decisions go in the notebook. Anything Claude should always remember belongs in CLAUDE.md, not in a chat. The notebook survives every /clear.
Your files are safe. /clear only wipes the conversation. Everything Claude built stays exactly where it is.

Situation	What to do
Starting a new task	`/clear`
A rule Claude should always follow	Add it to `CLAUDE.md`
Claude seems confused or keeps forgetting things	`/clear`, then explain the task fresh
You want to see how full the board is	`/context`

A fresh chat with a good notebook beats a long chat every time.

Why This Works So Well

Think about how you’d work with a real builder.

You wouldn’t hand them one enormous page of notes covering every job at once. You’d give them the house rules once (the notebook), then one clear job at a time (a fresh chat).

That’s exactly the rhythm the rest of this course uses.

Try it

Open Claude in your project folder and check how full the whiteboard is with /context. Then /clear it, and ask Claude what it remembers. It should still know what’s in your CLAUDE.md, but nothing from the chat you just cleared.

See an example prompt

/context

/clear

Then:

What do you know about this project so far?

Its answer should come from your notebook, not from the chat you cleared.