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points by russellbeattie 22 hours ago | 0 comments

So after reading the article, I asked a Claude Code session I'm working in at the moment about its memory and whether it needs to "dream" to reorganize itself because I honestly wasn't sure what it was doing about it.

It explained that unlike Chat, each project in Claude Code creates memory files in ~/.claude/projects/[project path]/memory/ with notes about both the project and my impromptu directives or instructions, and a MEMORY.md index file that's loaded for every new session. It told me that my current project - which has been going on for a while - has 61 files in its memory, so it suggested that now in fact would be a good time to clean them up. Perfect.

It gave some examples of things things it has memorized: Apparently I once told it to always capitalize the first letter after a colon. I don't remember doing that, but hey, that's basic English grammar, dammit, so I can see myself getting pissy about it. It had saved that bit of petulance on my part in the memory.

That's great, but it was saved only in the memory folder of that project. This is good to know! I hadn't realized that stuff wasn't saved globally. Or rather, I vaguely remember turning that option off at some point and now I'm realizing that means I need to do some maintenance manually if I don't want to have to constantly remind Claude to capitalize properly, (and to always refer to me as Mr. Big.)

Definitely a good article for me to read right now.

[–] epihelix 20 hours ago

> Apparently I once told it to always capitalize the first letter after a colon. I don't remember doing that, but hey, that's basic English grammar, dammit, so I can see myself getting pissy about it.

It's definitely not correct UK English grammar. TIL that the US uses some very odd colon rules.

[–] 0gs 19 hours ago

yeah this is not a rule in the US either :(

[–] russellbeattie 14 hours ago

It's almost as if neither of you wannabe pedants have a access to Google, or even an AI, which could help you out.

It's AP Style, which is used in basically every news article you've ever read.

The rule is simple: You capitalize the first word after a colon when it begins a full sentence.

[–] simpleintheory 14 hours ago

This is unique to AP and 18th CMOS: MLA and old CMOS versions with grew up with say to do the opposite.

Also, please try to be less dismissive!

[–] epihelix 6 hours ago

It's a US-specific rule, and only in certain style manuals. Chicago, for example, does not capitalise after a colon. (But perhaps your Google or AI had not heard of the Chicago Manual of Style?)

And there is an entire world out there, outside of the US (perhaps your Google or AI did not know that either?) that does not do this.

[–] russellbeattie 4 hours ago

> "It's a US-specific rule"

And? Calling it a, "very odd colon rule" assumes that British English is somehow the correct one, which it isn't. The United States represents more than 70% of the world's native English speakers. If we have a rule, then it's not the "odd" one.

> "...only in certain style manuals."

And? The two most important style manuals used by millions of people to write billions of articles and papers.

> "Chicago, for example, does not capitalise after a colon."

Did mean "capitalize"? (I'm kidding of course, I know you people like to stick with your quaint antiquated ways of spelling.)

You might want to check that again:

https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/search.html?clause=colo...

[–] 0gs 5 hours ago

if you want to be a pedant, you are. not necessary, but certainly sufficient. and i was saying in real life, not in the Chicago Manual of Style.