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Notes -
From what you mention, I think the problem is likely that the "knowledge base" isn't actually working nearly as well as a human's memory, so Claude is effectively amnesic; "when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it". This is known to be fixable (if probably requiring at least fine-tuning).
So yes, human agency involves a bunch of different capabilities and you need all of them at some level to be able to function (I don't think a human anterograde amnesiac would do very well at this task either, though one that had already learned how to take notes effectively might muddle through). This particular AI skimped on one of them, because it's not as useful to the task it was designed for, and that's crippling its capabilities at this task to levels well below its underlying reasoning ability.
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