how-it-works

how-it-works is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from thedotmack/claude-mem. It costs 47 tokens per session (264 once invoked), scanned A, original, Apache-2.0.

An explanation guide for claude-mem, a local memory system for coding sessions. It describes how coding actions become saved observations, how relevant notes return in later sessions, and where the data is stored.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to explain claude-mem’s observation process, later-session memory injection, local data directory, optional full-project priming, and uninstall cleanup.
Why use it?
It answers what the memory system records, when it starts supplying earlier context, and what leaves the machine. This removes uncertainty about its timing, storage, and use of an AI provider for compression.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one. Also seen: reads .claude/ paths.

Part of the claude-mem plugin — 17 skills, 1 MCP server shipped together

Good fit Use it to explain claude-mem’s observation process, later-session memory injection, local data directory, optional full-project priming, and uninstall cleanup.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/thedotmack/claude-mem/how-it-works
About the project

Claude-Mem, now presented as Grok Mem, records an agent's work, compresses it with AI, and brings relevant notes into later sessions so the agent can remember decisions and next steps. It is intended for persistent context across agent conversations and supports multiple coding-agent environments. The catalogue add-ons provide the workflows and integrations used to operate this memory system.

thedotmack/claude-mem · 93,603 stars · on GitHub · claude-mem.ai

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

Any agent
npx skills add thedotmack/claude-mem --skill how-it-works
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/thedotmack/claude-mem

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Or install claude-mem, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 17 skills, 1 MCP server.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for how-it-works

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/thedotmack/claude-mem/how-it-works/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/thedotmack/claude-mem/how-it-works)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/thedotmack/claude-mem/how-it-works"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/thedotmack/claude-mem/how-it-works/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

agentmods 80×15 button for how-it-works

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/thedotmack/claude-mem/how-it-works"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/thedotmack/claude-mem/how-it-works.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 47 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 264 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe. Third-party audits
  • Socket pass 5 May 2026
  • Snyk pass 5 May 2026
  • NVIDIA SkillSpector warn 7 Sept 2026
SkillSpector: 1 finding, up to medium

These are SkillSpector’s own severities. On a checked sample its high-severity flags on skills were ~96% false positives — a documented command, a public API, a “never do X” rule — so we show them as a caution to read, not a verdict. Why →

  • medium MCP Rug Pull · line 22
    npx commands without a version suffix (e.g. @1.0.0) create a rug-pull risk if the upstream server is compromised and publishes a malicious update.
    Fix: Pin the version: npx @scope/[email protected]
How audits are shown
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00047 $0.00264
Opus 5 $0.00023 $0.00132
Sonnet 5 $0.00009 $0.00053
Haiku 4.5 $0.00005 $0.00026

Measured 10d ago against content hash 9214da98b56a, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-10, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

how-it-works scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 10d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

plugin/skills/how-it-works/SKILL.md · 23 lines

What it actually says

How claude-mem works

What it does

Every Read, Edit, and Bash that Claude makes turns into a compressed observation. Observations get summarized at session end. Relevant ones get auto-injected into future prompts so the next session starts with context from the last one — no re-explaining the codebase, no re-discovering decisions.

When it kicks in

Memory injection starts on your second session in a project.

The first session in a fresh project seeds memory; subsequent sessions receive auto-injected context for relevant past work. Run /learn-codebase if you want to front-load the entire repo into memory in a single pass (~5 minutes, optional).

Where data lives

Everything stays in ~/.claude-mem on this machine.

Nothing leaves your machine except calls to whichever AI provider you configured for compression (Claude / OpenRouter / Gemini). The SQLite database, vector index, logs, and settings all live under that directory and are removed cleanly on npx claude-mem uninstall.

Files

What ships with it

1 file beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 10d ago First seen · 23 lines · 47 tokens per session scan A 9214da98b56a

Subscribe to this mod's changes

how-it-works is a skill published in the GitHub repository thedotmack/claude-mem (93,603 stars, last pushed today), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 47 tokens to every session and 264 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.