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How does an agent 'remember' things across conversations?

Memory & State

MemoryState ManagementRAGPersonalization

Asked at OpenAI · Meta · Sierra

How to Answer

"Three layers:

  • (1)Short-term — the message history array. This IS the memory for the current conversation. It's just text appended to the prompt each turn.
  • (2)Long-term — persist key facts to a vector store after each conversation. Before the next conversation, retrieve relevant past context. Example: 'User prefers formal tone' or 'User's team uses Python 3.11.'
  • (3)Structured memory — for critical facts, store in a database (not just vector). User preferences, past decisions, account metadata. The challenge: what to remember and what to forget. I'd use an LLM-based summarizer at conversation end to extract durable facts, and TTL-based expiry for ephemeral ones."

The deep dive — diagrams, tradeoff tables, and the follow-up trap

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