You are reading the built-in manual

These are the pages AURA carries within itself: inside the application, the ? key opens the one for the screen you are on. They are published here exactly as they are, so they can be read without installing anything.

What Claude knows about you and your projects from one conversation to the next. Three different objects share this screen, and mixing them up is the main source of error.

Object	File	Loaded when	Editing
Global memory	~/.claude/CLAUDE.md	At the start of every session, any project	Raw text
Project index	projects/<slug>/memory/MEMORY.md	At every session of that project	Raw text
Structured memory	projects/<slug>/memory/<name>.md	On demand, when it looks relevant	Fields + body

What the page reads

I walk projects/, and for each project I look for a memory/ subfolder. A project with no memory/ folder, or whose folder holds no .md, does not appear in the list — it is not empty, it is absent.

Inside that folder, MEMORY.md is handled separately: it is the index, not a memory. Every other .md is a structured memory, from whose frontmatter I read the name (the file name otherwise), the description, and the type.

The project names shown are shortened to be readable: the real slug encodes the full path (C--Users-…-devl-aura) and is cut after a known root marker (Documents, devl, repos…). The exact path stays visible in the breadcrumb tooltip, at the top of the editor.

The four types

The type is a label of nature, not a filing category. It is stored under metadata.type.

• user — who you are: role, expertise, lasting preferences.
• feedback — guidance on how to work, correction as well as confirmed approach. Must state the why.
• project — work in progress, a goal or a constraint neither the code nor the git history reveals. Absolute dates.
• reference — a pointer to an external resource: URL, dashboard, ticket.

A memory should not repeat what the repository already tells. Memories link to each other with [[memory-name]].

The editor

The header breadcrumb states the scope then the file; the tooltip gives the real path. The unsaved pill appears as soon as the text departs from disk, and changing selection with pending changes asks for confirmation before dropping them.

A structured memory is edited on two levels:

• the fields — name, description, and the type as clickable pills. They patch the matching frontmatter key in place: key order, keys I do not model and the body stay intact. A value that requires it is automatically quoted to stay valid YAML.
• the body — the rest of the file, in Markdown.

The global CLAUDE.md and a MEMORY.md are edited as a whole, frontmatter included if there is one: they are not structured memories.

Edit / Preview

The selector switches the content between input and rendering. A memory opens in preview — it is read far more often than it is changed; a memory you have just created opens in edit mode, on its template.

In preview, relative links are intercepted: clicking a line of the index opens the target memory in the editor instead of navigating the browser away. That is what makes MEMORY.md usable as a table of contents. A link whose target does not exist says so explicitly. Absolute URLs keep their normal behaviour.

Creating a memory

The + at the head of a project asks for a name. It is kebab-cased automatically — accents removed, lowercase, everything else becoming dashes — and serves as the file name. A name already taken is refused.

The file is pre-filled with the expected template: name, description, metadata.type set to project, and a body prompt. Nothing is on disk yet: the new badge stays until you have previewed, then applied the write.

The index keeps itself up to date

MEMORY.md is the table of contents loaded at every session: one line per memory, never its content. I keep it current without you having to open it:

• when a memory is created, the line - [Title](file.md) — hook is added, the title coming from the name field and the hook from description;
• when it is deleted, the matching line is removed;
• a line already present is replaced where it is, not moved to the end of the list, and its neighbours do not shift;
• if the index did not exist, it is created with a # Memory Index heading.

Recognition works on the link target (](file.md)), not on the text: renaming the label by hand breaks nothing. This upkeep is best-effort — if it fails, saving the memory itself did happen.

Writing and deleting

Every write follows the common contract: Preview… shows the diff, Apply backs up the previous version then writes, and refuses if the file changed on disk in the meantime.

Delete is offered only for a structured memory — neither the global CLAUDE.md nor an index can be deleted here. The deleted version is backed up first, and its line leaves the index.