Claude just shipped unified memory across chat interface and Cowork mode. Same context persists between both environments.

Practical implication: spin up a Cowork session and it already has the full context from your previous chat threads. No need to re-explain your codebase architecture, that client's edge case requirements, or your manager's weird formatting preferences.

The memory system is user-controlled - you explicitly decide what gets retained. Not auto-scraped, not inferred. You tell it what matters.

This solves the context-switching tax when moving from exploratory chat to execution mode. Cowork picks up where chat left off with zero context loss.