Ask Nova — your AI tutor

What's the cheapest way to add memory to a Claude agent?

Three options, cheapest first: (1) Append-only conversation log in your DB — works until tokens get expensive. (2) Periodic summarization with a cheap model (Haiku 4.5). (3) Vector store for retrieval. The right choice depends on whether your agent revisits past topics. Start with (1)+(2); add (3) only when retrieval pays for itself.

When does (3) pay off?

When the agent regularly references information from >10 past sessions, OR when the conversation log alone would exceed the context window every turn. Below that, summaries cost less and behave better.