Personal vs Project vs Local Memory

Claude Code gives you three kinds of memory file, and picking the right one keeps your guidance in the right hands.

Personal memory

~/.claude/CLAUDE.md is yours. It loads in every project you open, so it is the place for preferences that follow you everywhere — how you like commit messages formatted, your response-style habits, tools you always reach for. Nobody else sees it.

Project memory

./CLAUDE.md (or ./.claude/CLAUDE.md) belongs to the project and is shared with your team through git. This is where team-wide conventions live: build commands, architecture rules, gotchas everyone needs to know. Because it is checked in, one edit updates the guidance for the whole team.

Local memory

./CLAUDE.local.md is for private notes about one project. Add it to .gitignore so it never gets committed:

# .gitignore
CLAUDE.local.md

Use it for things that are specific to you and this repo but should not be forced on teammates — a personal scratch command, a reminder about your local setup, or a temporary rule you are trying out.

Choosing where a rule goes

Ask two questions. Does this apply to every project, or just this one? And should the whole team follow it, or only me? A rule for all your projects goes in personal memory. A rule for the whole team goes in project memory. A rule just for you on just this project goes in local memory. Get this split right and each file stays focused on the audience it serves.