A long session with a coding agent produces more than code. A bug you noticed on the way. An idea for a feature. A "we should also..." that the agent agreed to. Then the session scrolls on, gets compacted or closed, and the idea is gone. "Later" never comes, because nothing remembers it.

I have lost enough of those to try several places for them. None is perfect, and I want to know what you use, so this is a comparison with a question at the end, not a recommendation.

Scrolling back

The default. It works until the context is compacted or the terminal closes, which with agents is a few hours at most. I count it here because most people I ask are still on it.

A notes file in the repo

A NOTES.md , a CLAUDE.md , or the agent's own memory. Good for facts: the one flag that makes the build work, the trap in the deploy script. Bad for tasks. A line in a file has no status, no due date, and nobody closes it.…