Claude Code Forgets Everything Between Sessions. I Tested 5 Fixes.

Claude Code starts every session from zero — no memory of past decisions, debugging breakthroughs, or project context. I tested five approaches to this problem: manual CLAUDE.md files, the built-in auto-memory system, claude-mem's semantic vector search, topic-based shell hooks with Claude-Recap, and work tracking with Beads. Most developers need only the two built-in solutions layered together. For those who want structured conversation archives searchable by topic, per-topic tracking fills a gap nothing else covers. A developer on GitHub described it perfectly: "It's a goldfish." You close a Claude Code session after an hour of debugging auth. Open a new one. Claude has no idea what you were working on — the three approaches you tried, the edge case you found, the architecture decision you landed on. Gone. Context compaction makes it worse. Mid-session, Claude silently truncates older messages to fit the context window. One developer described losing four hours of work : "Architectur