Memory (AI)

AI memory refers to mechanisms that allow an agent to retain and retrieve information across steps or sessions. Short-term memory lives in the context window; long-term memory is externalized to vector databases, structured stores, or episodic logs that the agent queries at runtime.

Reliable long-term memory is the unsolved engineering challenge in production agent systems. Current best practice combines semantic retrieval (vector search over past interactions) with recency-weighted summarization to manage what fits in a finite context window.