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Agents don't need memory, they need documentation

364 points · 260 comments · kmeh

  1. kaydub · · focus · HN ↗
    You don't need documentation or the 3rd party memory systems. The code IS the documentation.

    All this stuff is LLM rube goldberg machines. It just pollutes context.

    I barely use AGENTS.md/CLAUDE.md these days. And where they remain, it's super basic high level stuff.

    I'm honestly still kicking myself in the ass on many projects where I did something similar to this. I kept tons of markdown docs and decision docs. Now those things are just causing problems because they got stale. Even after having sessions of reconciling documentation, the LLM just gets confused.

    1. chaostheory · · focus · HN ↗
      Code can get much larger than the documentation that summarizes it. It also doesn't cover intent or rationale. Even if you inexplicable don't want documentation, at the very least use something like gitnexus to map out your code because relying on code alone isn't good enough
      1. kaydub · · focus · HN ↗
        That just sounds like a code-smell to me.
        1. chaostheory · · focus · HN ↗
          [delayed]
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