How to Make Claude Remember Your Preferences

Use case: persistent personalization · ~5 min read

Claude is sharp in every conversation. The problem is it meets you from scratch every single time. Your name, your job, how you like responses formatted, whether you want bullet points or prose — none of it carries over. Custom instructions help, but they fill up fast and are a static block of text, not a living store.

This guide shows how to use Stash — a lightweight MCP record store — to give Claude a persistent, queryable memory of your preferences, so it can pull exactly what's relevant at the start of any session.

The custom instructions problem

Custom instructions give you roughly 1,500 characters to describe yourself to Claude. That sounds like enough until you realise your role, organisation, writing style, preferred output format, timezone, current projects, and response style preferences all have to fit in that box.

They don't. Most people end up with something like:

typical custom instructions

I'm a product manager at a mid-size SaaS company. I prefer concise answers. Use bullet points. No filler phrases like "Certainly!" or "Great question!"

Which is fine as far as it goes. But Claude still doesn't know which product you manage, your current sprint priorities, how you prefer to structure a PRD, or your standing constraints. And every time those change, you're back to editing a text box.

What Stash lets you do instead

Stash is a hosted MCP record store. Connect it to Claude once — it exposes context() to fetch your standing preferences and search() to retrieve specific records on demand.

You store preferences as structured records. Claude fetches them at the start of a session. When your preferences change, you update the record — no prompt-editing required.

What to store

Five categories cover most of what matters:

Identity: name, role, organisation, timezone
Work context: current projects, immediate priorities, team structure
Output style: bullet points vs prose, length, sections you always want
Tone: formality level, phrases to avoid, UK vs US English
Standing constraints: things Claude should never do without asking first

Setting it up

Step 1 — Add Stash to Claude. Paste the connector URL into Claude → Settings → Connectors → Add custom.

https://app.stashlite.com/mcp

Step 2 — Create an "about-me" record. In a Claude chat with Stash connected:

you → claude

Add a record to my "context" collection titled "about-me": Name: Sarah Chen | Role: Senior PM | Company: Luma (B2B SaaS) Timezone: GMT+1 | Focus: Q3 roadmap, API tier launch Style: concise bullets, max 5 per section Avoid: "Certainly!", "Great question!", passive voice in action items

claude

Done. Added "about-me" to your context collection.

Step 3 — Start future sessions with one call.

you

context()

Got it — Sarah, PM at Luma, Q3 roadmap + API tier. Responses will be concise bullets. What are we working on?

One call loads your entire standing context. Claude knows who you are before you've typed the actual request.

More things worth storing

example records

"prd-template" — the structure I always want in product specs "email-style" — formal to clients, informal internally, always end with a clear next-ask "stakeholders" — name, role, one-line priority for key people I work with "decisions-log" — big calls I've made this quarter and why

Tip: Store constraints, not just preferences. "Never commit to a deadline without checking with engineering first" prevents expensive mistakes — and it's exactly what Claude won't remember without a persistent store.

Updating preferences

When something changes — new role, new project, new output style:

you

Update my about-me record: I'm now Head of Product (promoted last week). Focus shifts to hiring 2 PMs + enterprise tier launch.

Updated. Congratulations on the promotion.

Next time you call context(), it returns the updated record. No prompt editing, no copy-pasting.

Honest limitations

No semantic search. Stash uses full-text search — keyword-based, not embedding-based. Specific terms work well; fuzzy concept matching does not.
Not a Notion replacement. Stash is a lightweight record store, not a document editor. Use Notion for your wiki; use Stash for the context Claude actually needs.

Free tier

Stash's free tier includes 2,500 records and 50 searches per month — more than enough for personal preferences and context records. Pricing may change; current limits on the pricing page.

Get started

https://app.stashlite.com/mcp

Paste into Claude → Settings → Connectors → Add custom. Google sign-in, free account, no credit card.