AI Guides › Workbench
By Nigel Guy · 7 min read
Most people end a good Claude session by closing the tab. The decisions, the rejected options and the half-finished next step stay buried in a long chat, and next week you either scroll back through it or explain everything again from the beginning. Memory feels like it should have caught it, and sometimes it has, but you can't see exactly what it kept or what it dropped.
The rule: before you leave a chat that mattered, have Claude write a handover note you can read, check and paste. Then put that note somewhere the next session will actually see it.
The handover note is a short, structured record: what you were trying to do, what got decided, what is still open, and the exact next step. You produce it with one prompt, reopen work with a second, and keep it current with a third. The rest of this kit covers where to store the note, because that choice decides whether it gets used again.
Everything below is built into Claude. Prices are Anthropic's US-dollar list prices at time of writing (Pro $20 a month, or $17 a month billed annually; Max from $100 a month), so check the £ figure at checkout.
| Tool | What it does | Cost / free tier | Best for | Catch |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The handover prompt (below) | Turns the chat into a note you can read and edit | Works on any plan | Every session worth continuing | Only as good as what was said in the chat |
| Project knowledge | Files and text that every chat in a project can see | Free plan: up to five projects; paid plans: no stated limit | Ongoing work you return to weekly | Chats in a project don't share context unless it's added to knowledge |
| Memory (Settings > Memory) | Claude keeps topics from your chats and uses them in later ones | On by default on Free, Pro and Max; admins control it on Team and Enterprise | Preferences and standing background | You don't decide what it keeps unless you edit Topics afterwards |
| Chat search | Claude looks up your earlier chats when you ask | Pro, Max, Team and Enterprise only | Finding a chat you didn't write a note for | Retrieves old chats; doesn't tidy them into decisions |
Run this as the last message in any chat you plan to come back to. Fill in the project name and, if you can, the date you expect to pick it up again.
You are writing a handover note for future me, who will read it cold in a
new chat with no access to this conversation. The project is [PROJECT_NAME].
I expect to return to it around [RETURN_DATE or "unknown"].
Go back through this whole conversation and produce the note under exactly
these headings:
1. Goal: one or two sentences on what I am trying to achieve and for whom.
2. Decisions made: a numbered list. For each, the decision and the reason
in one line.
3. Options rejected: what we ruled out and why, so I don't reopen it by
accident.
4. Facts and inputs: names, figures, links, file names and constraints I
gave you. Copy them exactly; do not round or paraphrase numbers.
5. Open questions: anything unresolved, and who or what could answer it.
6. Next step: the single next action, specific enough to start in five
minutes.
7. Context to paste: a short paragraph I can paste at the start of a new
chat so Claude is up to speed.
Rules:
- Use only what is in this conversation. If something was assumed rather
than confirmed, mark it [ASSUMED].
- If we never settled a goal or next step, say so instead of inventing one.
- Leave out greetings, dead ends with no lesson, and anything I asked you
to forget.
- Keep the whole note under [WORD_LIMIT, e.g. 400] words.
Before you answer, check: every number matches what was said in the chat,
every decision has a reason, and the next step is one action, not a list.
Read the result before you save it. It is the only step that catches a wrong number or a decision you never made.
Pick one home per piece of work and stick to it.
In a Project (the best default). Go to claude.ai/projects, click + New Project, give it a name, then use the + button in the project knowledge panel on the right to add the note as text or a file. Anthropic's help centre is explicit that chats inside a project don't share context with each other unless the material is in project knowledge, so the note is what links one session to the next. Name each note with a date, for example handover-2026-10-04.
In your own notes app. Fine if you also use other assistants. Paste the "Context to paste" paragraph into any new chat.
Not just in Memory. Memory works well for standing facts about you: your role, your tone, the tools you use. It is a poor place for "we chose supplier B over supplier A because of delivery times", because Claude chooses what to store and you only find out what it kept by opening Settings > Memory and reading Topics. Anthropic notes that each project keeps its own separate memory, so check inside the project if you're working there.
Start the next session with this. If the note is already in project knowledge, write "it is in project knowledge" in the brackets instead of pasting it.
I'm picking up work on [PROJECT_NAME]. Here is the handover note from last
time: [PASTE_NOTE or "it is in project knowledge"].
Before doing anything else:
1. Summarise the goal and the next step in two sentences, so I can confirm
you've read it correctly.
2. List anything in the note marked [ASSUMED] or under open questions that
would change how you'd approach the next step.
3. Ask me about anything that has changed since [NOTE_DATE].
Don't start on the next step until I confirm. If the note contradicts
itself, point to where instead of picking one version.
The confirmation step costs one message and stops Claude from setting off confidently on last week's plan when your circumstances have moved on.
When you end the second, third or tenth session, don't stack up new notes. Merge them into one.
Here is the existing handover note for [PROJECT_NAME]: [PASTE_OLD_NOTE].
Update it using only what happened in this conversation. Keep the same
seven headings. Move any open question we resolved into Decisions made,
with the reason. Replace the next step. Under a new final heading,
"Changed this session", list in one line each what you added, changed or
removed.
Do not drop an earlier decision unless we explicitly reversed it today;
if we did, note the reversal and why. If you're unsure whether something
changed, ask me rather than guess.
Replace the old note in project knowledge with the updated one, so there is only ever one current version.
In Claude Code, the equivalent home is the project's CLAUDE.md file, opened with /memory.