Persistent Memory for Claude Desktop

The problem: Claude Desktop starts over every time

Close Claude Desktop and reopen it, and the conversation you had yesterday is gone unless you scroll back to find it manually. Start a new chat, and Claude has no idea what you told it in the last one — the project you're working on, the decision your team made last week, the preference you mentioned twice already. Every session starts from zero, and staying productive means re-explaining the same context over and over, or keeping your own running notes to paste back in.

This isn't a Claude Desktop bug — it's how a chat app without an external memory works by default. The app itself doesn't have a database of "things you told it" that persists and stays searchable across every future conversation. What it needs is a memory layer outside the chat window itself: something Claude Desktop can search when a conversation starts, and write to as new facts come up, so context survives the boundary between one chat and the next.

This guide covers connecting Claude Desktop to exactly that — a persistent memory server it reaches over MCP — including the fastest install path and what to do if the default one doesn't fit your setup.

How it works

Great Arrow Digital runs an MCP (Model Context Protocol) server at https://www.greatarrowdigital.com/api/mcp. Claude Desktop connects to it as a file-based client, which means it authenticates with a personal API token rather than an OAuth consent screen — there's no browser step involved once the token is in place. Whatever gets stored during a conversation — a fact, a document, a synced integration record — is encrypted at rest with AES-256-GCM and becomes searchable the next time Claude Desktop (or any other connected client) asks for relevant context.

Claude Desktop specifically supports a one-click install path built around a .mcpb file — a Claude Desktop Extension package. Downloading and double-clicking it hands the whole setup to Claude Desktop's own install dialog, so there's no config file to open and no JSON to edit by hand.

Setting it up

1. Create your account. Sign up at /sign-up — no credit card required for the 14-day trial.
2. Open the install page. Go to /install once signed in and choose Claude Desktop.
3. Click "Add to Claude Desktop." This downloads a file named great-arrow.mcpb. Double-click it — Claude Desktop opens its own "Install" dialog. Click Install and the connection is live, no restart or config editing required.
4. Or install everything at once. If you also use Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, Cursor, or Kiro, the install page's universal installer wires all of them in one download. On a Mac it prefers an Apple-notarized .pkg when available (Gatekeeper stays quiet); otherwise it falls back to an unsigned .command script with Gatekeeper-bypass steps included.
5. Fall back to manual config if you need to. An "Other ways to install" section on the same page has a claude_desktop_config.json snippet you can paste in by hand — the file lives at ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/ on macOS or %APPDATA%\Claude\ on Windows. Restart Claude Desktop after editing it directly.
6. Confirm the connection and test it. Most connections are detected automatically. Once connected, tell Claude something specific — a project detail, a preference, a decision — then start a brand-new conversation and ask a related question. If memory is wired up correctly, Claude answers from what you told it earlier without you repeating it.

What changes once it's connected

Before connecting, every new Claude Desktop conversation is a blank slate. After, a new conversation can search the same memory the last one wrote to — so a decision you logged on Monday is available to reference on Friday without digging through old chat history. This is additive: whatever memory features Claude itself offers stay exactly as they are. The Great Arrow Digital layer sits alongside them, shared across every client you connect, not just Claude Desktop.

It also means Claude Desktop stops being the only place that context lives. If your team also connects Gmail, Slack, or another integration to the same workspace, Claude Desktop can search that synced content too — not just what you've typed into it directly.

Reconnecting on a new machine

If you set up a new computer, or reinstall Claude Desktop, the connection isn't something you have to rebuild from scratch. Sign back in at /install and repeat the one-click .mcpb download — it reconnects to the same account and the same memory, rather than starting a second, disconnected one. There's nothing local to Claude Desktop's own storage that the memory depends on; the memory itself lives on the server, addressed by your account, not by the machine you're using.

Where to go next

If you use ChatGPT alongside Claude Desktop, Share Memory Between Claude and ChatGPT covers connecting both to the same memory so neither one starts from zero. If Slack is part of what you want Claude Desktop able to search, Claude MCP Server for Slack covers that integration specifically.