claude-mem uses a compaction approach. It records session activity, compresses it, and injects summaries into future sessions. Great for replaying what happened.

A-MEM builds a self-evolving knowledge graph. Memories aren’t compressed logs. They’re atomic insights that automatically link to related memories and update each other over time. Newer memories impact past memories.

For example: if Claude learns “auth uses JWT” in session 1, then learns “JWT tokens expire after 1 hour” in session 5, A-MEM links these memories and updates the context on both. The older memory now knows about expiration. With compaction, these stay as separate compressed logs that don’t talk to each other.

I am planning to extend for other agents. But now it should work with some caveats.

I have configured claude specific hooks, the hooks keeps reminding Claude Code to use the memory when needed.

Without them, the agents will keep forgetting to use it and you would need to keep nudging it