Lesson 5 of 8
Web search & Memory
6 min read
You open a brand-new chat, and Claude already knows you run a bakery in Lviv — though you never said so here. And when you ask about this week's news, it just... knows. Where's that coming from?
It can look things up
On its own, Claude answers from what it learned in training, which has a cutoff date. Web search lets it reach past that: when a question needs something current — today's news, a fresh price, a recent release — it can look it up live and answer from what it finds, with links you can check.
Web search fills the gap between Claude's training and now. For anything recent, looking it up beats guessing from memory.
It can remember you
Normally each chat is a blank page — close it and it forgets. [Memory](glossary://memory) changes that. When something looks worth keeping ("I run a bakery in Lviv", "I write in British English"), Claude can save it to a store that sits outside any single chat. Open a fresh one, and those saved facts quietly come along — and you can see, edit, or switch off everything it keeps.
A single chat's memory ends when the chat does. Memory is a separate store that carries facts between chats — and it's yours to control.
Memory can save more than you meant from an offhand remark. If you're sharing something sensitive, use a chat that saves nothing — or open the memory list afterwards and delete it.
The shape of it
- —Web search lets Claude answer with fresh, current facts and cite them.
- —Memory stores facts outside any one chat, so they carry to new ones.
- —You can view, edit, or turn off everything Memory keeps.
In a fresh chat, Claude greets you and knows you're vegetarian — though you never said so here. Why?
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