I've been working with an agent as a secretary for 3-4 weeks now. CLAUDE.md, daily journal, state file, pipeline tracking.

bigbezet is right, agents have no clue what's worth remembering. What works for me is splitting it: the agent writes what happened, I decide what actually matters. Two places to manage: journal and the STATE.MD, which I request to maintain based on my expectations. Agent can read a journal if it needs, but the main place to check the status is STATE.md.

One thing I haven't seen anyone mention, though. After a few weeks of reading your rants about some coworker, the agent just takes your side on everything. Had to literally add "consider the other person's perspective" to my rules file. It just has too many one-sided notes in the journal. Otherwise you end up with a yes-man that has perfect memory.

The trauma replay thing gaigalas mentioned is real too. I found it hard to not make agent be biased. To be frank, even I'm noticing something like this: - I complain, agent defends me. - I'm putting into the chat a response from other llm which was not biased by my journal. It flips sides and now says the research makes much sense. - I say: "How much biased you are right now." and it responds something about being biased and "... to be frank, the truth is: ...". Even when asking for not being biased, is starts to play biased because it thinks I expect that. Sneaky bastard.