Memory File Within Size Limit

MEMORY.md should stay under the host agent's memory truncation threshold. Claude Code loads only the first 200 lines or 25KB of MEMORY.md (whichever comes first); content past either cutoff is silently dropped from the agent's context. Other agents that adopt a memory surface may set different caps. Keep the index concise — store detail in linked memory files, not inline.

Antipatterns

• Inline memory content. Writing full memory entries directly in MEMORY.md instead of linking to separate .md files. Each entry should be a one-line pointer, not a paragraph.
• Stale accumulation. Never pruning old or outdated memory entries. Over time, MEMORY.md grows past the threshold and the newest entries (at the bottom) are the ones truncated.
• Verbose link descriptions. Writing multi-line descriptions for each memory link instead of keeping each entry under ~150 characters as a scannable index.

Pass / Fail

Pass

# Memory

- [User role](user_role.md) — Senior engineer, Go + React
- [Testing preference](feedback_testing.md) — Integration tests, no mocks
- [Deploy process](project_deploy.md) — CI/CD via GitHub Actions

Fail

# Memory

## User Profile
The user is a senior software engineer with 10 years of experience
in Go and 2 years in React. They prefer integration tests over unit
tests because of a past incident where mocked tests passed but the
production migration failed. Their deploy process uses GitHub Actions
with a staging environment...
[... 250 lines of inline content]

Limitations

The 200-line limit enforced here is Claude Code's documented MEMORY.md truncation threshold; the parallel 25KB byte cap (whichever comes first per Claude's docs) is not enforced because line_count is the simpler signal. The rule lives in the CLAUDE namespace because the file-system mechanic it checks (a dedicated MEMORY.md file under ~/.claude/projects/<project>/memory/) is Claude-specific: Gemini's "memory" is a section appended to user GEMINI.md rather than a separate file; Copilot's memory is a system-managed GitHub repo setting with a 28-day TTL, not on disk; Codex has no memory mechanic; Cursor's memory mechanic is undocumented. If future Claude Code versions change the threshold, or another agent adopts a comparable file-system memory surface, the rule can be promoted to CORE with per-agent supersedes. Counts total lines including blank lines and headings.