How It Works

How It Works is an AI Engineering skill for Claude Code, published by thedotmack in claude-mem.

90.6K stars7.9K forkson thedotmack/claude-memAdded 2026/08/13Repository updated 2026/08/13

aiai-agentsai-memoryanthropicartificial-intelligencechromadbclaudeclaude-agent-sdkclaude-agentsclaude-codeclaude-code-pluginclaude-skillsembeddingslong-term-memorymem0memory-engineopenmemoryragsqlitesupermemory

Install in seconds

Install How It Works

Copy How It Works into your Claude Code skills folder. Run the command in your terminal, or review the source on GitHub before installing.

terminal

npx degit https://github.com/thedotmack/claude-mem/tree/main/plugin/skills/how-it-works ~/.claude/skills/how-it-works

Requires Node.js. Downloads this skill only — not the rest of the repository — into your Claude Code skills folder.

Without Node.js

git clone https://github.com/thedotmack/claude-mem.git

Clones the whole repository, then copy the skill’s own directory into your skills folder yourself.

In this catalog

Source file: plugin/skills/how-it-works/SKILL.md in thedotmack/claude-mem
Installs to: ~/.claude/skills/how-it-works
Collection: One of 22 skills cataloged from this repository
Category: AI Engineering — 2451 skills

What How It Works does

How It Works explains how claude-mem captures observations, when memory injection kicks in, and where data lives. Use when the user asks how claude-mem works or what it is doing.

How It Works is cataloged under AI Engineering on DirSkills. How It Works comes from a repository tagged ai, ai-agents, ai-memory, anthropic and artificial-intelligence.

Documentation

README

Excerpt

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.

This is the opening of the README. Read the full README on GitHub.

Commands How It Works provides

Slash commands named in this skill’s SKILL.md, listed in the order they first appear.

/learn-codebase

Frequently asked about How It Works

What else does thedotmack publish alongside How It Works?
How It Works is one of 22 skills that DirSkills catalogs from thedotmack/claude-mem, the repository it ships in. Its siblings there include Babysit PR, Cloud Sync and Design Is. Each one is a separate skill with its own page in this directory, installs the same way How It Works does, and is maintained by thedotmack in that same repository. The rest of the collection is listed on the thedotmack/claude-mem page.
How does How It Works compare to other AI Engineering skills?
How It Works ranks #46 by stars among the 2451 AI Engineering skills in this catalog. The most-starred ones next to it are Architecture Decision Records, AI-First Engineering and Agentic OS. DirSkills ranks by the star count of the repository each skill ships in, so that order reflects how popular those repositories are rather than any review of How It Works against them. Open each page to compare what they document and how they install.